We all get why recruiting the right person is important. Besides all the frustration of having the wrong person in a role, the financial and opportunity cost of making a recruitment mistake is staggering.
It’s often said that the cost of a mis-hire is 15x that person’s annual salary. If someone is set to earn ZAR 100 000.00 p/, that is ZAR 1 500 000.00 for hiring the wrong person! And we know for senior roles the costs are significantly more. Even more disturbing, disruption to your business can go on for months after the person has left.
So how do you ensure you ARE hiring the right person? Don’t start with the job description. I know that sounds completely counter-intuitive. But trust me on this. Start with the performance scorecard. The same scorecard that you will review someone’s performance with is the place to start when you are hiring. Because ultimately that is what you are going to use to determine if the individual you’ve hired has been successful in the role.
It is incredibly important to be clear on what constitutes success in the role. What are the areas they need to excel in? How will that be measured? What will high / mediocre / low performance in this role look like, based on the scorecard and measurements? Also spend time on what over-performing will look like. You don’t simply want someone to execute the role. They should be able to outperform and grow quickly within the role.
Once the performance scorecard is done, you will have a better understanding what experience, skill set and qualifications an individual would need. The job description and person profile then become so much easier!
When we are clear on what success looks like, we are also much better equipped to ask the right questions in interviews. We can ask for specific examples related to the successes we expect them to have in this role. We can better understand if their interests and competencies are going to support their enjoyment of the role or frustrate them. We are more likely to be able to walk out of an interview and know whether someone can execute on that performance scorecard well or not.
For that reason, it’s incredibly important to reflect on the scorecard after interviews. Based on the examples provided, are you reasonably comfortable they can fulfil the performance required for the role? Where might they excel? Where might they struggle? This provides further information to probe in second round interviews, references and psychometric assessments if used. It also feeds very well into your induction plan, and where you can quickly nip issues in the bud.
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Candice Clark is the founder and Managing Director of Dynamic Talent