As employers begin working to retool their hiring practices in order to cope with the current talent shortage and other new complications in the job market, while many are looking to dramatic new strategies for solutions, others have realized that the answer may be far simpler, and that the real answer to these problems is in refocusing their old hiring tactics. To do this, employers will first need to find a better definition of what it is that makes a great new employee. So, here are four more candidate qualifications that employers will need to recognize and asses, as compiled by executive search firms.
- One of the most obvious subjects that will need to be addressed during the interview process is the matter of compensation and benefits. Employers will of course go into these proceedings with expectations in place for what they will be willing to provide to their new hire, and of course each candidate will have their own expectations as well. The earlier this subject can be brought up and these expectations compared, the less time can be wasted on those individuals whose expectations do not mesh with those of the company.
- Yet another crucial factor that employers should look for in their candidates is the willingness of the individual in question to fully commit to their company for the long term. All too often employers will take on a candidate who has outstanding qualifications and skills only to find a short time later that that individual has decided to move on to another organization. Here interviewers will need to take a careful look at candidates’ resumes and inquire thoroughly about the individual’s work history to establish a timeframe of how long they have spent in their past roles.
- One of the most vitally important factors that employers must take into consideration when assessing the candidate’s level of compatibility with the organization itself is what ethical and moral beliefs the individual in question holds. Any successful organization has their own ethical code which they function under and in order for a new hire to successfully blend into the organization without causing problems, employers will need to determine whether or not a candidate possess those same set of ethics. While this can be tricky to determine this is perhaps most easily done through a series of carefully selected and structured line of questioning in the interview process designed to determine how the individual has had to cope with ethical decisions in the past.
- Every company has their own distinct corporate culture, and if they are really striving for success this is something they have taken into careful consideration and spent a good deal of time defining and refining. Given the value of a company’s corporate culture in the structuring of their organization, the setting of the company’s goals, and the route they have set for themselves to achieve those goals, it is then vitally important that new hires be individuals who mesh well with this preexisting culture. While making such an assessment can be complicated, the most sure way of doing so is to add an additional step to the executive search and hiring process by including other individuals from within the company in the interview process, as well as setting up times for top candidates to come in and shadow some of their prospective coworkers and managers to allow both parties to get a feel for one another and how successfully they will be able to work together.
Maurice Gilbert is Managing Partner of Conselium Executive Search, which specializes in placing Compliance Officers and Legal Counsel for clients in the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific. Maurice is also CEO of Corporate Compliance Insights, a worldwide publication devoted to governance, risk and compliance issues. Maurice can be reached at maurice@conselium.com or maurice@corporatecomplianceinsights.com.
