Month: May 2018

Categories
Human Resources

Interviewing for Red Flag Identification

Getting the Right Candidate Means Identifying the Wrong Candidate Early

Written By: James Aiken

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You have a vacant position. You need to fill it. Yet, you need to fill it with the right candidate. The interviewing process, notwithstanding whether you love it or hate it, is costing you both time and lost productivity due to this gap. However, hiring can go wrong. This article will help you avoid “toxic” candidates and help you source the right talent for your business.

This article will give you a new approach. Don’t waste time on the wrong candidate. Learn to quickly recognize signs of a mismatch so you can focus on the right candidate for your urgent vacancy. The latest academic research along with industry best practice all point towards the centrality of nurturing good talent. However, the converse of this outcome is to quickly move on from talent that doesn’t align with your candidate profile.

BABY STEPS IN RECRUITING

It is all about knowing what you want. You should know what the position entails, what the duties are and the responsibilities therein. You need to understand how that role interplays with the wider business. This way you can take small steps towards getting the right candidate first, without being bogged down with candidates that do not match what you’re seeking.

According to Harvard Business Review, in a paper entitled Toxic Workers, the cost associated with hiring the wrong person can exceed $12,489 – excluding litigation and regulatory costs. Furthermore, some academics believe hiring the wrong person can also decrease organisational productivity by creating a negative influencer within the organisation who will counter the wider business goals and objectives through their negative psychology.

There is a dilemma and a conundrum here. Getting the wrong staff member can cost a business a lot of money. However, the metrics and benchmarks used to target the right member of staff can sometimes be gamed by the right ‘negative’ influencer. The research above highlight this reality and as such it is crucial that businesses plan their recruitment processes on the assumption of such negative counter-experiences.

PLANNING AHEAD

It is crucial that your job advertisement is curated to define the full range of employment and role experiences. This way, the candidate, can be sure the role suits their skills sets and experiences. However, as a business leader, your role is to focus, with laser pointed clarity, at the wider issues.

As a business leader, when looking at candidates, you need to focus on a nuanced reality. All the candidates can do the role – they’ve curated their own resumes in order to highlight this certainty. Therefore, you need to ask yourself whether the candidate should do the role. This is not about employment history or qualifications but about a wider array of intersectional experiences from emotional intelligence markers to outside workplace interests. These diverse metrics can help identify crucial markers. As a leader, you need to be able to understand the team you lead.

 


Categories
Human Resources

Six Markers of a “Toxic” Employee

There are six ways, as a business leader, you can avoid the hassle of recruiting a toxic employee. This section will explore a series of useful processes that can help to nurture an environment in which recruiting a toxic employee is difficult. The six stages are as follows:

  • MULTIPLE INTERVIEWS AND DIFFERENT ANGLES

Get two or three stages of the interview process – you can offer a telephone interview, followed by a face to face interview and perhaps a test-based interview. This myriad of diverse investigation will be able to help identify flaws in the candidate’s personality and whether their personal values would impact on your business.

  • GET SOMEONE ELSE TO INTERVIEW

You have been fooled many times. You know it. Your colleagues as individuals have been hoodwinked. However, getting a team to interview a candidate, whilst daunting for the candidate, can help to create a group mentality around the recruitment process which can lead to a group attitude towards the candidate’s suitability.

  • TOXIC MINDS THINK TOXIC THOUGHTS

Ask the crazy questions! Think outside of the box. Ask a question like; “can you think of six issues relating to your previous employer?” This question is a leading question designed to get the candidate to not just answer a singular question but to explore a myriad of themes within the confines of a singular answer. If blame is appropriated into this experience, you can understand how this person endeavours. So, ask a crazy question.

  • CRYSTAL BALL GAZING

The dreaded question, “where do you see yourself in ten years”, is the ultimate question for discerning the narcissist toxic employee. The purpose of the question is to understand the long-term goals of the individual within the context of the organisation. This tricks the individual into providing information about their values and the worth they have placed on their prospective employer.

  • DON’T LET HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF

There are lessons from history you can learn, as the maxim goes. This is so true when it is placed alongside the context of recruiting individuals. Bad and negative experiences are central in deconstructing toxic future employees. You can ask questions that force the candidate to explore their past. If patterns begin to emerge, there is a chance this could happen again – within your organisation!

  • THERE IS NO I IN TEAM, BUT THERE IS ALWAYS A WE IN RECRUITMENT

When sourcing, sorting and interviewing a candidate. There is one way you can identify a toxic employee and that is by discussing their work history and listening to their responses. Do they use the word “we”? Did they work in a team, but the interviewee sounds like it was a solo one-man project? These vanity responses hint at an altogether more troubling sub-dynamic and that is the presence of narcissism. Toxic employees are toxic because they’re more about themselves than the wider team or business goals. Listen for the “we” in candidate responses.

These six markers can help a business leader avoid the costly pitfalls of recruiting a toxic employee and by-pass the ancillary costs of such a mistake. This article has identified the science surrounding toxic employees. It has discerned the real problem a toxic employee would create and how this would impact your own business goals and objectives. Therefore, as a business leader, you need to plan. You need to strategize your recruitment process. You need to understand the vacancy. You need to understand what that role will entail. From this knowledge, you need to approach the selection as a wider team effort.

THE NEXT STEP

The six markers herald a more collaborative approach to recruitment that can help you to find the right candidate for your business. By following these six metric markers, your business can save tens of thousands of dollars and hire the best staff for your business needs.