“But they were such a good fit on paper!” How many times have you heard that description of a failed hire? Unfortunately, the paper is only part of the story. It’s the person behind the paper that matters. The answers to three key questions will most often determine the success of a hire.
Can they do the job?
Pretty basic, right? Of course the candidate must have the requisite hard skills. In many instances, however, the environment in which they apply those skills gets overlooked. Scope, scale, and context are as important as the skills themselves.
If you’re hiring an executive to support a 24-by-7 operation, do you really want someone from a custom-build shop? The tools may be the same, but the work is vastly different, and the new hire may not even understand the questions being asked.
The résumés of a candidate managing a team of 10 and one managing a division of 100 may read the same, but the two require vastly different leadership skills. A sales executive who carries a multi-million-dollar quota may not understand the dynamics of selling a single million-dollar deal. The list goes on.
Will they do the job?
We are all capable of many different things. But it’s not enough to have the ability to do a job; the candidate has to want to do your job. The individual’s goals and the company’s goals need to be in sync, and both must share the same vision of success.
The word “passion” is almost a cliché in executive search right now, but the fact remains that people are complicated. We really only excel at the things that capture both our hearts and our heads.
Do they fit?
Cultural fit is crucial to a successful long-term hire. Culture includes physical environment, process, and attitude, among other things. It’s everything from jeans and t-shirts versus suits, to communication style, to decision-making process.
If an executive is accustomed to working in a large environment that requires multiple levels of input, they may freeze when the decision is theirs alone. Likewise, someone who’s used to “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” may stagnate in a more deliberate, highly process-oriented environment. A creative type won’t last in a company whose reason for doing things is “because that’s the way we’ve always done them.”
The bottom line
A failed hire damages more than just the egos of the parties involved. It costs the company money, opportunity, morale, and momentum. Vetting a candidate in these three areas, can they, will they, do they fit, will go a long way in avoiding costly hiring mistakes.