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How to Hire the Right Person for Your Team
As a manager part of your role is to recruit and select staff for your team.
Recruiting and selecting staff is a major investment decision for any organisation.
Hire the wrong person and you can destroy a team and find yourself spending a lot of time dealing with problems.
And of course when you make a bad hiring decision people ae quick to point out your errors over and over again.
Now don’t get me wrong it can be tough recruiting and selecting staff.
Sadly many managers and organisations don’t give anything close to enough attention to hiring the right person for their team.
So what can you do to increase the chances of hiring the right person for your team?
Start by looking at the needs of the organisation from your team
Have you done this recently?
In my experience few do this on any sort of a regular basis.
The rest of your organisation is a customer of your team.
So you need to be clear about what the rest of the organisation needs from your team.
Next consider what’s required to meet the needs of the organisation from your team
To deliver what the organisation needs from your team, you will need specific knowledge, skills, experience and qualities.
Unless you have considered this you will always struggle to find the right mix.
Map what you have currently in your team
Within your existing team you have people with knowledge, skills, experience and qualities.
Mapping these out will help you identify what’s well covered and where you have gaps.
Focus your recruitment to fill the gaps first
A lot of managers simply pull out a standard advert, job description and person specification.
Trouble is your activities to find potential candidates will not be targeted.
You are more likely to attract the right person if you have a targeted advert, job description and person specification.
Assess applicants against your targeted advert, job description and person specification
By doing this you will be more likely to invite the right people to interview.
Have a structured job interview of sufficient length
The interview is all about you and the candidate assessing determining whether working together is right for all parties.
It’s a big investment decision so make sure you take the time to assess the suitability of an individual for your team and for them to learn about the organisation and the team.
Focus questions on those areas that matter most and get candidates to demonstrate their competencies with examples and evidence rather than just theoretical answers.
The bottom line: Hiring the right person for your team can be tough. At the same time by approaching professionally you greatly increase your chances of achieving a successful outcome.
About the Author Duncan Brodie
Since 2006 I’ve worked with in excess of 8,000 accountants and professionals in workshops, seminars and one to one helping them land their next jobs and become better leaders, presenters and business partners. Before that I spent 25 years in accountancy climbing the career ladder from Payments Clerk to FD. I’m a CIMA Fellow, Certified Professional Coach and Team Coach Facilitator.