Assessment

If you can recruit people who are talented, brilliant, natural leaders, it can make all the difference to your organization’s success--and your sanity as a leader. There is nothing that improves your chance of success more than having a strong, trusted team.
But even with the best intentions, you can choose badly. Particularly if you get really excited about a candidate and hire for the wrong reasons.
Here are six mistakes--some of which I've also made myself--that executives make when their misplaced enthusiasm for a candidate causes a superficial, rushed, and ultimately bad hiringdecision.
 

Resumes are dead. Interviews are largely ineffectual. Linked-In is good. Portfolios are useful.
But projects are the real future of hiring, especially knowledge working hiring. No matter how wonderful your references or how well you do on those too-clever-by-half Microsoft/Google brainteasers, serious firms will increasingly ask serious candidates to do serious work in order to get a serious job offer.

I strive to be the world’s most prominent advocate of employee referrals simply because there is no more powerful tool in recruiting. Well-designed referralprograms not only identify top prospects that are not in a job-search mode but they also require employees to assess candidates for skills and fit and to sell them on the company and the job. Taken together, this identification, assessment and selling feature make referrals superior to any other source.
 

Candidate selection and assessment is one of the most conservative processes in all of talent management. Many think the topic is not worth a detailed examination, but a weak assessment or interview process can be the primary cause for not hiring top candidates. For decades, the majority of firms have relied heavily on the basic trio of resume screening, interviewing, and reference checks to choose the best candidates. Fortunately, the growth of metrics, the Internet, and technology in HR is now challenging these traditional approaches.

Could your Facebook profile be a predictor of job performance?
A new study from Northern Illinois University, the University of Evansville and Auburn University suggests it can.
In an experiment, three "raters"—comprising one university professor and two students—were presented with the Facebook profiles of 56 college students with jobs.

One of my clients, an accomplished CFO involved with global M&A responsibilities, wanted to make sure that his new finance hires could really use all the brainpower they had been blessed with, so he incorporated a critical thinking test as part of the interview process.

Honesty is not the best policy, especially online. Most of us know that an inappropriate picture or comment posted online can derail a person’s job prospects. In my view, recruiters and hiring managers make too much of people’s online posts and using them in a hiring process is fraught with problems, but online conversations can work to a recruiter’s advantage, especially in a talent community.
 

I continue to be impressed by the evolution of pre-employment assessment tools. This evolution is being driven by the continued growth of the value proposition assessment provides. 

Have I told you how excited I am these days?
Ask me about how things are going as the new kid on the block over at Marriott International… and I’m excited. Like over the moon excited. I’m excited about this role. About the company. About the opportunity. About their excitement for digital/social media/mobile. About the potential to do big, great things. I get home from work each day and I talk my hubby’s ear off about my day, the people, the work ahead of us… because it’s all just exciting. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have this opportunity and these colleagues.

Many job seekers have long suspected their online employment applications disappear into a black hole, never to be seen again. Their fears may not be far off the mark, as more companies rely on technology to winnow out less-qualified candidates.
photo courtesy of ToobyDoo

Does it pay to recruit from -- or even go to -- a prestigious university? There have been a number of studies that follow the careers of students who attended elite universities and those who just missed the criteria for admission.

With more Americans living and working outside the United States than ever before (5.08 million, according to the U.S. State Department), it’s becoming increasingly likely that new hires for companies in the U.S. will have spent some portion of their lives abroad. Candidates with international work or school experience can bring a worldview that more domestically focused applicants lack, making them attractive hires in an increasingly global economy.

Unfortunately, screening the international portion of an applicant’s work or other activities is fraught with peril. Strict privacy laws, poor integration among law enforcement, and other problems make screening complicated and difficult. Yet, failing to screen or adequately screen this portion of a candidate’s life can expose companies to significant risk. Fortunately, employers that address, rather than evade, this problem can position themselves to screen and hire these candidates safely, efficiently, and effectively.

For our government to succeed and achieve its mission, it must be able to identify and hire skilled, capable and dedicated employees.
 
Everyone agrees that the federal government doesn't always hire well, with talent lost because the selection process today moves too slowly and because hiring managers and human resources personnel often do a poor job of selecting the right candidates--those who will be the most successful in the job.
 
The Obama administration is seeking to address these issues with a hiring reform plan that calls for agencies to "select high-quality candidates efficiently and quickly."
 
Given the direct connection between good hiring decisions, a first-class civil service and a high performing government, the Partnership for Public Service, in cooperation with PDRI, a PreVisor Company, took an in depth look at how agencies are assessing candidates for federal jobs today, the barriers to hiring the best candidates and how the process can be improved.
 
This study from the Partnership for Public Service found that applicant assessment is the weakest link in the government's problematic hiring chain, with top candidates frequently getting lost in meaningless evaluation. The public is the biggest loser, because the result often is a wasted opportunity to strengthen the civil service.