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As a hiring manager, making decisions on who to hire during the interview is not an exact science. Even when you do feel that you are making the best choice on a candidate, there’s never a guarantee that they will work out. We have sought some help in determining which candidates are best to keep for a second interview and those who you should push out the door immediately. Liz Ryan, CEO/Founder of Human Workplace gives us the following tips:
1. Hire the candidate who has already thought through the assignment and has ideas about how they will approach the job. If you ask the question “How would you approach this assignment?” and one candidate says “I’d want to study your product literature, read your customer service call scripts, shadow one or two of your most experienced reps and get comfortable with your credit and return procedures” that person is more on the ball than a candidate who says “I’m not sure — I guess you’ll train me on the job, right?”
2. Hire the candidate who knows why they want this job, as opposed to any old job they might be offered. Hire the person who can tell you clearly how this role fits into their career plan, like this: “I’ve been working blue-collar jobs and I want to get into white-collar jobs. This customer service role seems like a great way to do that. I like to talk about products and I like being on the phone.” A person’s reason for pursuing one job over another job is an important part of their brand!
3. Hire the candidate who understands their own career story. Some people run their own careers. They can explain every twist and turn in their career history. Other people don’t run a thing — they are blown about like a leaf in the wind. They are not driving their own career. Things happen to them — they do not make things happen.
4. Hire the candidate who can tell you one or several stories about how they made a difference or saved the day at a past job or at school. These stories are called Dragon-Slaying Stories. Hire the person who knows they have personal power, and knows they get to decide how to use it!
5. Hire the person whose goals for their new job mesh with your goals for the department. If you interview someone who is gung-ho to rise through the ranks quickly and your company doesn’t offer a career path beyond customer service, it’s probably not a great match. Hire the person who wants what you have to offer!
6. Don’t hire a candidate who merely shows up at a job interview ready to answer questions — period. Don’t hire the candidate who has not researched the company and has no questions to ask you.
7. Don’t hire a candidate who cannot tell you what they’ve learned in their career so far. Do not hire a person who has the functional skills to do the job but can’t tell you why they’re interested in doing the job again.
8. Don’t hire anyone who is more concerned with the “box” around the job — the selection of nearby lunch spots, the location of their workstation or the dress code — than they are concerned with the job itself.
9. Don’t hire anyone for a customer service job whose anecdotes illustrate a cynical view toward customers in general. It is easy to develop negative feelings toward all of humanity when you answer the phone forty times a day, but that worldview doesn’t work very well in a customer service role. Some candidates cannot help rolling their eyes and mocking their past customers as they tell you about their customer service experience. Everyone understands how trying a difficult customer can be, but a person with the mindset “Customers stink!” is not your best customer service hire.
10. Finally, don’t hire a person who isn’t on top of the details during your recruiting process. Of course, you must be on top of the details on your end, too — keeping your commitment to get back to candidates after interviews and so on. People show you who they are, and you must believe them when they do. If a candidate gives a great interview but then has to be reminded three times to send over their references, for instance, that’s a bad sign.
Tips taken from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2017/05/17/fire-reasons-to-hire-someone-and-five-reasons-not-to/2/