3 Ways to Over Ride Your Gut Check When Hiring

I often have discussions with employers about their dissatisfaction with certain members of their team. How can so many prospective employees that seem like good hires turn out to be poor performers?

1. Who’s Interviewing?

Most sales managers are excellent and somewhat compulsive closers. They want to close the job seeker on working for them. I have often taken a prospective hire to the sales manager for an interview and observed the manager talking the entire time. When the interview is over, the manager loves the prospective hire. No one listens more attentively, smiles more appreciatively and laughs at your jokes more enthusiastically than someone who wants a job. The manager has a big win and feels good about the applicant.

2. Go Deeper Than Resume

A brief go over of the resume is not enough to uncover the strengths and weakness of the applicant. Everything the applicant says will spin to the positive. That’s what it is for. Stable job time used to be the norm. are you aware that most people under 35 expect to have as many as 5 or 6 consecutive careers in their lifetime? Almost all sales organizations I have worked with for recruiting want a stable long term force but never actually have had one.

3. Finding the Gems

If the team is not the ideal force, it may simply be that the ideal people did not catch the managers eye. Talent mining is a skill. It consists of looking for a constellation of traits and talents. Experience is secondary. The correct set of questions and careful consideration of the answers is needed to see if the prospective hire has the talent needed and the correct personality to fit the organization.

The search for talent in sales organizations is an ongoing process! Change the list your gut is checking and you could end up with your dream team

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Comment by Bill Gasson on July 19, 2012 at 11:44am: Michal,

You are absolutely correct ,we do try to close the applicant,and in doing so some negative hire's turn up .

It seem's alway's best to search your own personal database, or net working on your own

Comment by Pierre Michel Bazire on July 15, 2012 at 9:28pm: Hello,

Good article Michal Ann If I cano add to this, most managers conduct interviews from what they've lived (looking for a job) over the years and learned from their own managers who learned the same way..

PMB

Comment by Michal Ann Benedict Enders on July 14, 2012 at 2:02pm: Kurtis, you got it just right! And thanks for your comment. Good hiring is not always in the natural skill set of sales managers,

Comment by Kurtis Smith on July 14, 2012 at 10:34am: Michal Ann? I hope I did not crucify your name. This is a really important post that most leaders should read. The reason is that because many managers lack the skills or resources to correctly on on-board new hires, they enter the hiring or interview process with preconceived ideas about what they need in order to compensate for the lack in a personnel development strategy, resulting in bad hires and high turnover ratios. Good Post!