Take the Leap Today!
Hiring is a leap of faith no matter how many steps are in the process. Someone may have all the skills and experience required but if they don’t have the temperament, attitude or drive they will fail or be mediocre in their role. Even if they do have the skills, experience, attitude and drive, the timing may not be right for them. Do you want to start that consulting job that requires 50% travel when you have a newborn? For some people no and for others it’s the perfect time. Sometimes you only think it is the perfect time, realizing too late that it is not.
So what do we do?
Smarter people than me spend their entire lives studying, analyzing and creating systems and processes to hire better. So can I only tell you what has worked and not worked from my experience. In 20 years in the recruiting business, I have hired well over 200 recruiters and account managers that I would manage for 3 companies with different employee cultures and been part of placing well over 1000 IT professionals in contract or FTE roles. We have used referrals, references, personal references, skills testing, aptitude testing, multiple interviews, panel interviews, required presentations, work samples, and requested Tax Statements to verify earnings as well as every form of interview style imaginable. I can honestly say that most of these tools work about the same. They tend to weed out dishonest people, but as to who will be competent or incompetent or who will be mediocre and who will be great, these tools are pretty mediocre themselves.
So what’s my point?
Make a decision. All hiring is a risk. Don’t spend 6 weeks deliberating when the same decision could have been made with the same risk after 5 days. Choose two or three of the hiring tools that you like and make a decision. This also requires that you assess your hiring decision at some point (usually within 3 months) and be unafraid to make a decision on the soundness of your hire and either keep the person or terminate them. It helps neither party to be in a job that is a mismatch for whatever reasons.
Take the leap today. There are good candidates who are being wrung out by the hiring process who will turn out to be great if given the chance.