By Jim Champagne
First of all I hope I am not jumping the gun by using the word “recovery” in the title of this blog. Well if you are one of the companies that are hiring, congratulations. While it may seem that the abundance of eligible resources will make it easier to find the right person for your company, think again. This can often be the most challenging time to find the perfect person to fill one of your open positions. First of all you will be flooded with resumes and once you are finished sorting through the litany of people who just blast out their resumes, you are left with a sub group of potential candidates. There are a couple of things to consider as you narrow down your search. First of all do you know what talents and skills it really takes for a person to succeed at this role? Analyzing the talents of the people that have already succeeded in the role will help tremendously. The next problem is how can you be sure that the person you are considering wasn’t someone else’s problem and that they were finally able to solve it when they layed them off? Also how can you be sure that they really have the core talents it takes to succeed in the role you have open?
These problems can be solved by having a profile of what a successful person looks like for specific roles in your company. Secondly you are allowed to ask probative questions during the interview that will root out people that were other company’s problems. And lastly you can uncover the person’s talents and match them to your opening by doing a pre-hire assessment on them. While this may seem like a lot of work, it is much less work and much less costly than going through the same process in another couple of months.
