The Parable of the Ideal Candidate

DING! DING! The elevator opens with a new candidate for the open position. The candidate comes in, perfectly dressed, hair combed perfectly, suit/dress perfectly ironed, and perfect matching shoes. She carries her notebook with several copies of her resume neatly tucked into the notebook, ready to answer questions and take notes. The secretary escorts here into the room to begin the interview.

In the interview, the candidate, answers all the questions perfectly, asks questions back, and seems to be the perfect fit for their company. The candidate impressed senior management enough that they are confident in deciding to hire, or at the least continuing the process with another interview. Seems like the candidate is destined for success at the company, right? Seems like they will be an asset to the company… I mean she was dressed great and made an impactful statement with their knowledgeable discussion… so she must be that value-add resource the company has been searching for, right?

Not so fast! Although the candidate displayed taught skills, it doesn’t mean she will succeed when she starts at the company. Ever wonder why so many new candidates start out with so much anticipation and then often don’t meat their full potential, only for management to lower their expectations to match the candidate? The reason is because they were recruited, and not qualified.

At first glance Recruitment and Qualification seem to be the same word, maybe just a repackaging of the same concept. I assure you it is not. Recruitment happens in all areas of life, but not all those that are recruited are qualified. As an example, every year college basketball coaches travel the country to visit high schools to recruit players for their college. They choose the school/player to visit based upon the ‘numbers’ the person displayed, the statistics. The goal is to ‘recruit’ the player to play at their school and their system. While visiting the school, the coach will look at the intricacies of the candidate to see if he/she can fit his school’s system. The coaches goal is to Often the coach will review the players ball movement, skills on the court, team agility, and other aspects of his game that may not be 100% captured by stats. One area he can not determine perfectly, his attitude. The player attitude, work ethic, communication skills, team first mentality, are often overlooked in favor of statistics. Isn’t this what we do when we look at resume, and we look at the appearance of someone? We try to make an assessment based upon a few close interactions in a controlled, possibly scripted, environment. What if we could qualify the candidate better upfront, even before the interview?

Lets take a real world example……

Imagine for a second, a basketball coach of an elite team. Imagine the coach had a 360-degree view of the player. The coach could assess how he would be as a team mate, will he put the team first, does he think he knows more than the coach, is his attitude right? How much better would our perception of athletes be? Would more athletes focus on developing their soft skills just as much as their hard skills? Would becoming a better teammate, making your teammates better become a desired attribute? Perhaps we would see more team first attitude, positive attitude around most young new talent. I know people say the best coaches can get the best out of their players, I think that should be revised… the best coaches can the best out of the ‘right’ players.

The sports world tries to determine ‘character’ of the player as the last decision. Often this is done through references/interviews with team-mates, coaches, and others. Let’s be frank, when is a reference going to really come back negative? When they are really really bad. We should’ve filtered them out long before that anyway. What if the coach, was able to interview the player via phone before visiting him, and asked him key questions, like what is his philosophy on the game? What if he was able to have the player come to his college for 1-2 days to assess how he plays and interacts with teammates? If the coach assessed the players personality, without even reviewing a single play, by having him take an assessment, or asking him team related questions, customized to the role he will fill would he be able to filter the player better?

Absolutely. I will explain why.

Every company, just like sports teams at all levels, has their own ‘culture.’ Culture is often defined by the people and practices (often unwritten) followed by people within the company. Senior Management sometimes is not fully aware of the culture, as they often do not ‘play’ or ‘work’ within the culture, but rather sit at a level above this culture. Work environment is the major reason the best candidates often fail within a company. You hear phrases like ‘It just wasn’t the right fit’ or ‘It was a crazy place to work’ or ‘they have a weird process’ or even ‘the candidate just couldn’t pick up how we do things’ and then the search continues for someone else.

So how do we qualify someone for our corporate culture? The first step is to fully understand the culture. When talking with hiring managers, I ask a series of questions to grasp the role, not just understand the job description, but to fully understand ‘a day in the life of’ or sometimes ‘a week in the life of.’ This understanding allows me to speak to the candidate and match their personality, combined with their job specific skill set, to determine if the candidate is the right fit. I look for a candidate who is teachable, humble, ambitious, and good with communication. Teachability is not just the ability to regurgitate what you know, but rather the ability to apply what you know effectively. Being humble means that you are willing to follow what the team says even if you may believe there is a different way, you are able to put your ego to the side in favor of the company. Ambition means your work ethic is strong, you will do whatever it takes to succeed, even if that means sometimes working at times you don’t want to. Effective Communication, both written and oral, is the most fundamental, yet most overlooked skill. Being able to effectively convey what you are doing, your thoughts, and have those crucial conversations, puts the candidate one step ahead. ‘Hard Skills,’ the work specific skills, are easy to teach, cultivate and grow. ‘Soft skills,’ how you communicate and connect with other people, can be taught but need to have a certain foundation to be cultivated. It’s not the company’s job to cultivate your soft skills, and sometimes even your hard skills. This is the most important aspect in qualifying a candidate, are they looking to develop their soft skills, as much as they are their hard skills? A recruitment firm/HR organization has to change the focus from hard skills to hard+soft skills, and begin to weigh soft skills the same or greater than hard skills.

The qualification of a candidate should happen BEFORE the interview. Instead of just calling, matching the resume to the job description, and submitting/scheduling/preparing the candidate for the interview, take a few minutes to understand the soft skills the candidate truly has and if it will fit properly within the corporate culture.

So now when the candidate walks out of that elevator, you can be assured, he/she has the right attitude and personality for success.