I have been involved in some hiring conversations lately. Our involvement comes when a candidate has passed an initial screen and before a second interview. We adminster an assessment to help better understand the candidate and to make the next interview even more effective.

The firms that do a good job of hiring have a defined process and they follow it. Interviews arent a surprise nor an incenveninence they are scheduled to allow time to prep for them. How many times you been thrown a resume and asked if you have time to conduct an inteview….and what kind of message does that send?

Back to the assessments. First off, the assessment is part of the process. It is not some super trump card to rule a candidate in or out. It is a super input card for interview prep.

One candidate from last week was Mr Personality. Everybody loved him on the first interview. His profile confirmed that. But his profile also suggested his attention to detail was lacking and he might not be forceful when needed. It remained for the interviewers to figure that out for real in the second interview. In other words Mr Personality had to explain some things as he answered very targeted questions. His answers showed he had grossly oversold himself in the first interview. He wasn’t hired. But without the assessment he would have been because the halo of likability was shining brightly .

The hiring process should, in fact, be a process, not some ad hoc afterthought. You want better employees? Hire better employees. That starts with you though.

Let me know if you want to talk about it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 1st, 2011 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.