Hiring new employees purposefully is one of the most direct ways to build a company’s success amidever growing external challenges. You need to have the best people working for you to beat the competition and enhance your team’s abilities to a level much higher than that of your competitors. If you are a manager and you look to recruit a team member, look for the most capable candidates - people whose brilliance exceeds your own.
A hiring manager might compare a candidate’s qualifications with the job description, but not sit back and think, what can I learn from him? Some managers just don’t want to be outsmarted by the creativity, skills and experience of a new employee. Business leaders should strive towards creating a team of excellence.
Nobody sets out to hire ‘B’ and ‘C’ grade players, but sometimes this is the result when ego or job insecurity hampers your judgment. And if you end up hiring ‘B’ and ‘C’ players, the company can end up being a total failure while you yourself will be rated a failed leader.
Smarter than you
As any well-seasoned recruiter knows, the most fitting applicant for a position often needs to be far better at many competencies than the manager doing the hiring or even the person that they’ll be reporting to. While this fact can be intimidating to the one doing the hiring, it’s necessary to build a competitive organisation. Highly competent employees improve the performance of their teams by imparting variety.
While it’s instinctual to hire people whose personalities are most like our own, a company of clones or ‘yes men/women’ will seldom succeed. You need to hire people smarter than you, so they continually challenge you to improve the average performance of the team.
Some managers are intimidated by the prospect of a follower who’s in some way more able or knowledgeable than them. They perceive the talented candidate as a threat. This type of thinking can have a detrimental impact on a business and in the long run make you an obsolete leader.
The remedy is to always encourage personal growth and introspection for everyone on the team. Managers can become more acquainted with themselves by engaging and learning from new recruits and external knowledge. Inspiring leaders are most often not discovered.
They are created and re-created through continuous knowledge building and skill development for personal-growth. Some managers see themselves as victims in their personal and professional lives. They maintain an outlook that things are being ‘done to them’ and refuse to take responsibility for their business outcomes.
When managers take responsibility for their actions, opportunities for improvement and growth present themselves. Instead of being insecure about their job when hiring someone more capable or knowledgeable, these managers should embrace the chance to collaborate with an individual who has a brilliant, yet different perspective.
Stop and check
If you’re rushing to get someone hired, stop and check to see if it’s because you feel excited about them too early on. Is he someone you really like (someone like you, naturally), or someone who is actually the best right fit for the job.
Yes, a likable personality is always important, but emotional hiring should not be at the expense of overlooking someone who may be better suited – in terms of attitude, ambition, demonstrated behaviour and competency – to the actual job. Design a culture and install hiring practices which attract superstars - don’t settle for less.
Create an organisational mandate to hire only ‘A grade players’ and clearly define what that means. Craft an interview process in layers, beginning with discovering the way that a candidate thinks, enquiring about past performance and then seeking the big picture of what he or she wants from a career.
Success-focused employees will always choose candidates who complement their skills and abilities. Hiring people who are smarter than you means that the work can be confidently delegated over time. Then focus on the important stuff - growing your business and hiring more ‘A’ players.
They make our businesses more successful by bringing additional skills and valuable ‘differences’ to the table. Hire carefully, following the proven method of skills assessment, benchmarking and communicating to ensure your company will continue on an upward trend for years to come.