Ever Hired Someone Who Just Doesn’t Fit?
New recruits …. Can sometimes be a bit like a new pair of shoes! We all know someone who has bought that special pair of shoes that they ‘just had to have’, they are ‘brand new shiny’ they are the ‘in-look’ and they stand out!
Your new hire – A poor fit?
Sometimes when we start to wear new shoes in, they can painfully pinch and hurt – leaving us blistered and sore! We may persevere wearing them, as they may have cost us a fair packet to buy and we don’t want to give up on them yet! Eventually most of us can’t wait to sling them out as we admit they are a poor fit and a waste of money!
An applicant may also look just the right person on C.V and perform great in interview and practical tests, but still end up being the wrong person for the role. Once they join you and start to settle in, their attitude and impact may be disappointing, against what you and your company expected. They will probably end up leaving after a short while if the job isn’t going as planned. Yes, experience, qualifications and skills are key but the ‘job and your business fit’ will make or break if a team member is successful, engaged and retained in the longer term.
Let’s state the really obvious. The ill-fitting shoe … is simply a poor fit and will give you painful feet! So how do you avoid an ill-fitting candidate, giving you a painful headache?
This appears to be tricky to say the least!
Read on for 6 vital ideas and tips to put into action:
When recruiting, the interviewer has to decide who will perform best (and therefore achieve the right outcomes and results). But the interviewer vitally also needs to work out who is going to ‘fit’ with your Business and the Job Role – if they are to stay in your company for the foreseeable.
- Review their skills and experience that are relevant to this job and discover to what extent the candidate will get job satisfaction from performing these tasks, activities and responsibilities. There is no point having the skills, experience if they are not going to be satisfied in the role, as they inevitably will leave at some stage.
- Ask yourself these questions:– Is the job really right for the candidate – does it align to their personal, job, career goals? What is the most important things to them in a job? Find this out in the interview.
- Ask yourself if the job is similar to what they have done before, or is it about developing new skills and knowledge to progress? Their short term ‘fit’ and long term retention in your business, depends on their answers to the above. If it is a similar role as they had before, why are they leaving their current employer? What will they expect to gain, by joining your company doing a similar role as before? If it is more responsibility and/or a promotion then the learning and development opportunities should be a key motivator and help retain them.
- A Good match? Compare your answers above to your actual job offering and what you need from that person to meet your particular business needs.
- Your company culture – a good fit? How compatible are they with your company culture – ‘the way we do things around here’? Test it out in interviews by asking the right questions. If you work in a highly pressured, customer-focussed environment, then your best hire will be resilient and likely to be willing to work the necessary hours to ensure results are achieved for customers.
- You can develop a competency framework – one detailing your organisation’s culture and values and use this to measure interviewees against it. If your organisation’s core behaviours are focussed on achieving results and responding fast, in an interview you may ask, ‘How do you make sure you meet deadlines under pressure, whilst still achieving good results in your work’?
