guest post by Dr. Seth Stone : Has anyone ever told you what to do without telling you how to do it?

I’ve been there and done that, it’s a frustrating experience for everyone involved. To that point, I read an article about good Human Resource (HR) practices the other day. It offered some valuable insight. The only problem was, the final nugget of wisdom was, “to hire great people.” Does this strike anyone else as easier said than done? In this scenario, the ‘what’ is a great idea, but without the ‘how’ it’s like going on a scavenger hunt blindfolded.
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This got me thinking, is there a practical yet simplistic way we can go about hiring great people? After all, HR and hiring are so difficult for the sheer sake that human beings are the ultimate wild card in any organization. A mentor once told me, if you want to see a person’s true character, give them power. I think the same can be said of hiring. Have you ever interviewed an outstanding candidate and found after hiring them that they could have won an Oscar for their modern day rendition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? If you have, you know what an organizational nightmare it can be. Despite these challenges, I believe there are four simple steps we can take to try and find great talent.

1. Balance what you want with what you need – This starts long before the first interview. We have to be able to separate our future wants from our immediate needs. For example, maybe the want is to double sales over the next three years, but at present internal communication is akin to a game of telephone with a hundred participants. So while you might want a rock star sales person, what you may need is a strong operations manager.
2. Be transparent – Everyone wants to put their best foot forward in the interview process, even the hiring manager, and rightfully so. After all, first impressions are a big deal for a reason. That said paint a realistic picture of where the organization is today and where it wants to go. Not doing so will blindside even the best candidates and set them up for failure before the ink is even dry on their employment contract. That doesn’t mean berate your organization and scare candidates off; it just means no rainbows and unicorns when it comes to areas where you’re struggling.
3. Seek values alignment – This one is tough for a couple of reasons. First, because people can talk a good game in the interview process and they require next to nothing to back it up other than the resume that they created themselves, how convenient. Second, if we’re being honest, a lot of the questions we want to ask we simply can’t, it’s the law. This doesn’t mean you can’t be acutely listening and looking for general character traits that will be a good fit for the organization. For example, if your organization is all about customer service, what might demonstrate that the person sitting across from you has a servant’s heart?
4. Look at the person, not just their credentials – When I got out of college, my first full-time job was interviewing for one, or so it seemed, but one interview still stands out to this day. The hiring manager asked me, “the girl that was in here before you graduated from Harvard with a 3.9 GPA, so why am I going to hire you?” I replied, “you’re not,” stood up, shook his hand and went on with my day. Maybe she was the best candidate for the job and Harvard is a wonderful institution. But, the moral of the story here is someone’s identity is not defined by where they went to school or what companies they’ve worked for in the past. Are they valuable in terms of experience? Of course. Do they tell us everything about the person? Absolutely not. We must learn to see the whole picture.

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While these may feel like unconventional practices in some respect, I’m a firm believer that if we want to get better at something, we have to be willing to see it and approach it differently than we did in the past. What I’m really suggesting here is that we bring the human element of Human Resources back into our hiring processes.