Hiring For Success: Find The Right Fit

The biggest challenge facing software companies today is finding the talent to fuel their growth. As an industry, we continue create new jobs at a pace that far outstrips the pace of new people coming into the market. As a result, too many companies have resorted to the “Next Warm Body” hiring syndrome. Some companies have even resorted to the mirror test (if they can fog the mirror, we’ll take them).

This always has been and always will be a losing strategy. I have had quite a few sales executives tell me that they would rather have a less than perfect person in a territory than leave it empty. I have had a lot of development executives tell me they a certain number of bodies to staff a project. An in most cases, they have come back later with horror stories about turnover, lost sales, missed delivery dates and morale problems amongst the good employees.

One of the keys to hiring a winning team is the ability to define what a winning team looks like. Building a profile of the successful person should be your first step in your staffing efforts. Think of the profile as your template of success. You will use this template to guide your recruitment, interviewing and evaluation efforts.

There are three parts to a good profile. The first is a clear, specific list of your expectations (What the person must accomplish). Second, is a list of the technical knowledge and skills the person must have. Finally, you need to clearly identify the behavioral characteristics the person needs for success.

The list of expected outcomes is the hardest part of the profile to create. You have to thoroughly understand your business needs and translate those into the specific outcomes the new person needs to achieve. A way to simplify the process is to break the job into short, medium and long–term timeframes. Then you need to answer the question, “What must the person accomplish during this period to earn the label of success?”

Repeat this process for the medium and long term and you have good picture of what the person needs to accomplish to make you happy. This is a thought provoking exercise that causes you to examine many aspects of your business which on it’s own makes it worthwhile. This document also doubles as the best discussion tool when you are explaining the job to perspective candidates.

The second step in developing a profile is to identify the technical knowledge and skills necessary to accomplish the identified outcomes. This is the piece of the process that people have the least problems with. You are all tuned into the technical requirements.

I would like to make one suggestion. Instead of thinking about just education and experience, try to look for the person’s ability to apply those skills in a way that is consistent with the needs of your company. There are many ways to solve problems and approach situations. Experience only tells you that they have done it one way. You want to make certain your profile identifies the way you want it done at your company.

The final step in developing a profile is to identify the qualities, characteristics and behaviors the person needs to display to be successful. You need to capture the concepts of fit, culture and attitude to have a truly accurate picture of the successful person. There is a straightforward technique to capture this information.

We all want smart people who are creative, show initiative and are team players. But, if you are going to successfully hire the right person you need to be able to translate these labels into specific areas you can accurately determine in an interview. Here is a series of questions you can ask that help translate the labels into behavior:

• How must the person behave to fit in your company?
• What are the behaviors displayed by your existing top performers?
• What does a team player do to earn that label?
• How does someone with the sought after trait behave?

By applying these questions to the “soft” skills and attributes, you will determine the specific behaviors necessary for success. Your strategy in the interview is to determine how the person has behaved in situations that are the same or similar to those they will face on your job. By getting a series of past examples, you should be able to detect behavioral patterns resulting in much easier hiring decisions.

Your success profile is like a roadmap. Without it, your chances of reaching the right destination are not very good. The other major benefit of building profiles is that you can leverage your efforts. Once you have put in the work to create your first profile, use it as a starting point for the next profile. Most of your behavioral (cultural) characteristics will repeat between jobs inside the company.

The challenge continues to be finding the right person for the right job at the right time. So build your profiles and throw away your mirrors.