How To Spot The Right Person

Copyright (c) 2007 Mr Sital Ruparelia

Someone recently asked me: ‘Sital; I’ve got a good number
of candidates for my vacancy. How do I make sure I choose
the right person?’ Here are some ideas that will help you.

Essentially you need to have a really clear idea about what
you want, so that you can target your interviewing
questions specifically at assessing candidates’ suitability
against these criteria, then make an objective decision
around this – along with a healthy dose of common sense and
instinct.

Many small businesses have a rough idea in their heads
about the type of person they are looking for and then have
an unplanned, unfocussed conversation (the interview) and
then hire a candidate that they ‘like’ and have a good ‘gut
instinct’ about. But they often realise within days or
weeks that they hired the wrong person….

Here are some steps that will help:

1. Have a full job specification for the role you are
filling What type of experience & knowledge, skills,
personality and values are right for the role and your
business? What level of ambition are you looking for; how
long do you expect someone to stay in the role before they
move on? Invest some time now and you will ensure you avoid
wasting time interviewing and potentially offering roles to
the wrong people.

2. Be clear what your job criteria “look like” What exactly
does “first-class customer service” mean to you? How do you
know when you see it? What exactly does “a great eye for
detail” mean in your business

3. Interview against these criteria By all means ask
generic questions that allow you build rapport, and be
conversational, but also ensure that you ask specific
questions that allow you to assess whether the candidate
matches up to your requirements Ask the right questions
that will elicit examples and evidence that allow you to
test whether the candidate has the traits, skills and
experience to meet your criteria What does “first-class
customer service” look like to them? Their answer will tell
you whether you share the same standards when it comes to
the quality of customer service Ask them questions which
require them to provide actual examples of when and how
they have provided “first-class customer service”

4. Rigorous selection decision Don’t just hire someone
because you ‘like’ them and establish a good rapport in the
first 5 minutes – this is a common mistake Don’t make a
decision on your own. Get a trusted senior colleague to
meet them to give you a second opinion Remember, you are
hiring the right person for your business and you have a
responsibility to the business and your team to do just that

5. Focus on hiring people with the right ‘core’ values By
that I mean the right personal values, attitudes and work
ethic. You can usually teach skills (e.g. IT or technical
skills), but you can never ‘train’ a work ethic or the
right attitude into someone. That comes with the person and
is usually formed in their early years – both from the way
they were brought up and also from their early working life.

For this reason I always look at where people BEGAN their
careers to see what type of moulding they got at the start
of their working life.

6. Don’t worry about making mistakes Interviewing is a
skill. Like any skill, whether it’s cooking a meal or
hitting a golf ball, it improves with the experience and
wisdom that comes from having lots of goes, messing up,
learning and implementing that learning You can’t learn to
be a proficient golfer without losing a lot of balls in the
rough. And you can’t become a top-rated chef without
messing up a meal on occasions So go ahead: do lots of
interviews and learn as you go along Find the approach that
suits your style and ask the questions that fit your
business and the positions you are hiring for Once you find
your style and are comfortable in an interview situation,
in addition to learning to spot the right people, you will
start to attract the right people as you will be at your
relaxed and confident best – which will make you an
attractive proposition to a potential employee.

Following these steps will require you to spend some extra
time at the beginning of the recruitment process, but it’s
an investment that will save you a lot of time in wasted
interviews and loads of time and money from hiring the
wrong people.

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Sital Ruparelia works with small businesses that struggle
with recruitment and retention issues and helps them
implement strategies to Find & Keep The Right People.
This is article is an extract from Sital’s successful
e-book “Interviewing Made Easy”
http://www.InterviewingMadeEasy.com