Looking for the Supreme Being?
How often do we end up working so hard to develop people – giving feedback, managing conflict and reducing the impact of a poor fit?
Recruitment is still enough of a mix of art and science that we will never get it right all the time, but setting some good practices in place can at least increase our chances of finding the right fit.
That classic statement of people hiring for skills and firing for attitude always comes up for us with recruitment as it seems to be the case that we look for a perfect, supreme being when recruiting – who of course doesn’t exist.
So we make do with someone who has all the right qualifications and experience and then are surprised when it doesn’t work out.
Clients often ask us to identify for them internally and externally – who has potential and how do we assess them? And our response is simply, “potential for what?”
Our inspiration for work on recruitment and assessment is to keep things simple. Clarity and simplicity are at the centre of everything we do here. What does the role involve? How might someone need to go about doing that for it to work well in this organisation? What makes the difference between someone ok at this job and someone who is outstanding?
When we have a clear sense of criteria – i.e. we have answered the question “potential for what?” and prioritised the most important areas to assess, we put together an assessment process that measures just that.
And because we’ve developed an approach that works extremely well for designing and delivering these assessments – our clients simply see that criteria brought to life using whatever range of tools has been most appropriate.