When you’re choosing your next hire, it can be tempting to hire the candidate with the best resume, fancy education and full-stacked skills.
No brainer, right?
Before you start showing her the ping pong room and coffee machine, you might want to consider this.
A glowing, impeccable resume is no guarantee that your top-tiered candidate on paper will actually work well with the rest of your team.
For instance, often times, the freakishly smartest tech professionals end up being so arrogant and controlling that they don’t know how to take feedback or direction. Without fluid communication skills, delivering and scaling results can be next to impossible.
That’s why many experts say hiring for potential is better than hiring based on experience.
This article will help you gauge just how great of a fit your best candidates really would be upon hire.
He chooses folks who are committed to a singular focus and passion outside of their day job. In a letter to his shareholders after just a few years of launching Amazon, he offered the example of hiring an employee who is a National Spelling Bee champion.
Finding candidates with unique or interesting talents is a good way to add value and dimension onto your team.
She said that asking about their success one year from today helps dig into a candidate’s true motivation. Are they self-absorbed or excited about contributing to the greater good?
“You learn a lot about what motivates people,” Peluso told the New York Times. “Will they talk about ‘I, I, I,’ or ‘we?’ I love people who talk more about teamwork and leadership.”
“Will they talk about ‘I, I, I,’ or ‘we?’
The most run-of-the-mill candidate anthem is “you want to work at a small company and have a big impact without understanding our product,” Kate Fiedelman, leader of Pinterest’s human resources diversity and inclusion team, told Cosmopolitan in a recent interview.
“Literally everyone says that. That is the No. 1 face-palm for me.”
Candidates who demonstrate they understand the product and offer a creative answer will go a lot further than the cookie cutter folks.
Plus, as an added bonus, it helps demonstrate that your company actually cares about their people, building trust from the get-go.
“It helps us get to know the candidate better on a personal level without having to ask personal questions,” Barrett says. “From asking those questions, we've been able to learn about candidates' hobbies, how they like to work and even what their long-term goals are.”
“It breaks the ice, it gives us a chance to see if the person can think quickly on their feet,” says Jesse Pelayo, product manager at CyberCoders. “Because not only do we ask for what they choose, but also for them to say why they chose it.”
“There’s no wrong answer (except for declining to answer it all, which someone has actually done) and it’s also a cultural introduction.”
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