The ability to select the right person for an organisation is one of the most prized skills of leaders – because people drive an organisation’s success.
Simon Sinek famously tweeted:
“The responsibility of a company is to serve the customer. The responsibility of leadership is to serve their people so that their people may better serve the customer. If leaders fail to serve their people first, customer and company will suffer.”
And Branson is often quoted saying:
“Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”
If your people drive your ability to deliver client value, hiring the right people sits at the heart of your competitive advantage. If you recruit by filtering – the most common type – you will almost always miss the power of recruiting by selection. That’s because filtering deals largely with the what of candidates, whereas selection gets to the how and why…and is the proactive, pinpoint targeting of the right person for your role and wider culture.
Signs you might solely be recruiting via filtering
After sourcing candidates, the first cut is typically to see if they have experience that could match the role. This early-stage filtering is necessary and efficient. However, after that first cut, here are some indicators you might still be filtering, rather than strategically selecting:
Filtering the whole way through will fail you almost every time. We have often been engaged by clients who were fairly sure of the winning candidate via filtering, before the interview and, 30 minutes in to a selection-based interview, they soon realised they didn’t have the desired attributes. Imagine if they hadn’t started actively selecting.
Critical steps to ensure you’re intentionally selecting
Great recruitment is about understanding the behaviours that will determine success in a role. A selection-based process drills in to find out how a person operates…the behaviours they bring to the table…and linking those to a clear understanding of what will be successful in your organisation. Some pointers:
In all, use each stage to ensure you’re getting the right profile on each candidate, and deeply understanding the story behind the ‘data’. It’s worth the journey. Our clients frequently make offers to people who wouldn’t have made it through a filter-based process, but were clear leaders in a selection-based process. Investing in selection also reduces the cost and other risks of a mis-hire and, more importantly, ensures you’re building a team able to make your organisation succeed.
To learn more about this subject, contact Carroll Consulting on +61 7 3833 6288 or visit their website using the link below.
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