Allow Top Candidates to Show-off With These 12 Interview Questions

Top candidates require a top notch interview to show-off their abilities and exceptional skills. Standard interview questions won't bring out the real performers and will not excite a quality new hire.

Dr. John Sullivan, writing for ere.net, explained;

"Instead of dwelling on the past, a superior alternative is to ask them to solve real problems, and to demonstrate that they are forward-looking and that they have solutions for the future. Top candidates routinely dislike standard interviews because they find them tedious and predictable. Most interviews are simply not designed to allow a top candidate to show off their capabilities, ideas, and innovativeness."

In his blog post, Dr. Sullivan suggests 12 questions that will encourage top candidates to showcase their skills in problem solving, innovation, forward thinking, and motivation. I've summarized them below. These type of questions require a deeper understanding of the position and the industry but are well worth the preparation time to find the best talent for your client.

 Questions about identifying and solving real problems:
1.) How will you identify problems and opportunities on the job?
What steps will you take on the job during your first few weeks to identify the most important issues and opportunities in your new position?
2.) Can you identify the likely problems in this process? Give candidate a process diagram that contains flaws.
3.) Solve a real problem you will face - Give candidate a bullet point outline of an existing problem.
Questions that show a candidate is forward looking:
4.) Forecast the evolution of this job - What are some of the ways this job could evolve over time with changes in technology or business environment?
5.) Forecast the evolution of this industry - What are the trends you see in this industry over the  next 5 years?

Questions that show a candidate's ability to innovate and learn:
6.) Show us how you would be a continuous learning expert - what area in this job do you need to be a leading edge expert and how would you keep on top of things.
7.) Show us your adaptability when dramatic change is required - give us an example of a situation in this new job or a previous job where you see a need to adapt or show your team adapted.
8.) Show us how you will innovate - walk us through how you would innovate over the first year of your position.

Questions to help us better understand the candidate: (questions relating to an individuals competencies or preferences
9.) List and rank your job acceptance factors - pay, job duties, fit with your manager, level of responsibility, opportunities - 5 factors you would use to compare jobs
10.) List and rank your job motivators - factors that motivate you on the job
11.) Tell us the most effective approaches for managing you - feedback, rewards, closeness of supervision, communications approach, leadership styles
12.) List and rank the capabilities that you bring to this job - e.g. knowledge, experience, education, skills

source: ere.net | 12 High Impact Interview Questions for Top Candidates | Dr. John Sullivan

HireQuality provides Recruitment, Talent Management, and Management Coaching services to meet your organizations needs. Call us at 416.413.1177 or visit our website for more information.

Smart Hiring Strategies - avoid making a bad hire

During the recruitment process how to you gauge 'the right-fit', and measure the understanding the candidate has of your core values, communication style and work ethic? How do you avoid making a mistake when it comes down to selecting the final candidate?

"One of the most costly, time-consuming blunders a business can make is picking the wrong person for the job.", Ryan Holmes, CEO HootSuite.

Holmes, who ran his own business for over two decades, wrote a blog post recently, "The Unexpectedly High Cost of a Bad Hire". In it he references the US Department of Labor estimate that the average cost of a bad hiring decision can equal 30% of the individual's first-year earnings.

Lou Adler, another LinkedIn Influence, and author of Hire With Your Head, recommends overcoming the visual impact of first impressions by conducting a phone interview prior to the face-to-face meeting.

In his blog post "Performance Matters, First Impressions Don't", he suggest using MSA (most significant accomplishment) e.g. “Can you describe your most significant accomplishment?”? Another is: “How would you solve this problem?”

 “I’ve worked with thousands of candidates, and tracked hundreds of them over the past 30+ years. The only common trait among the best is their track record of solid performance, not the quality of their first impression,” wrote Adler. “Judge them instead on their performance. You won’t be disappointed.”

At Hire Quality we offer services such as workView JobSimulations™ which allow employers to see candidates in action performing the critical tasks that drive job success. This unique hiring tool will dramatically increase your hiring accuracy and reduce your risk of making a hiring mistake.

Our proven job simulation process allows clients and candidates to interact and engage each other over authentic work related issues. By assessing real on-the-job performance, we remove personal bias and emotion-based decisions from the selection process. The good workers are quickly separated from the good interviewers.

In a traditional interview, candidates tell you what they've done for others. In our simulation process, candidates show you what they can do for you. Hire Quality's job simulations help answer the key hiring question: Can the candidate successfully do the job?

Research shows that well designed and professionally facilitated job simulations are 4xs times more reliable than traditional job interviews at predicting success. The use of job simulations as a validated hiring tool has experienced double digit growth in the last five years.

More companies are looking for practical and objective ways to improve their hiring process. Hire Quality's optional service, workView JobSimulations™ has proven to be a win - win for both clients and candidates as they are mutually protected from the associated risks of poor hiring decisions or bad career moves.

Source: BBC Capital Blog Post | July 19, 2013

HireQuality provides Recruitment, Talent Management, and Management Coaching services to meet your organizations needs. Call us at 416.413.1177 or visit our website for more information.

Surround Yourself With Talent - Building Your A-Team

There are very few successful businesses running on the talent of one. While your business may start off that way, as soon as you need to scale up and hire, you'll need to make the best decisions about the people who will share your vision and grow your company.

Building a team is not just about individual player stats and accomplishments, but how that individual can adapt and fit with the rest of the group. A well motivate and cohesive team will not only execute projects and routine tasks with ease but will bring new ideas to the group and see around the next corner.

As a business owner you need to identify new roles needed in your organization and understand the team dynamics of your group. Certainly teams can be forged with incentives and the influence of corporate culture, but if you can put together an A-Team that clicks and naturally supports its members, you have much less people management to do.

Invest the time to get it right and the rewards will follow.

HireQuality provides Recruitment, Talent Management, and Management Coaching services to meet your organizations needs. Call us at 416.413.1177 or visit our website for more information.

Building Your A-Team |  source: LinkedIn Influencer Post, James Caan

The real skill of recruitment is all about getting that blend of disparate talents and qualities which mix together to make a functioning unit.

Any good leader or manager will tell you that the key to success is all about the quality, skills and experience of the people they surround themselves with.

And all great entrepreneurs understand that the skills needed to launch and grow a successful business are very different to the ones needed to manage and run an established operation

From this perspective, my inspiration is (fellow Influencer) Richard Branson, who personifies having the right team around him. He has some of the best people and it’s fair to say the impact is obvious. He has one of the most recognised businesses in the world and I put this down to having an A-Team.
It’s not just naïve, but also foolish to think that just one individual is capable of running a large organization on their own.

Anyone who does not have a decent team or management structure in place will sooner or later see aspects of the business start to suffer.

It is a fact of life that individuals are not talented at every discipline and sometimes it makes perfect sense to let the experts do the job they have been trained and are paid to do.

But running a team is not just about letting people get on with their designated roles. It’s also about creating the right mix of individuals and fostering the right spirit.

If you get your recruitment process wrong, things will quickly start to go astray much like a dysfunctional family

read more on LinkedIn..

HireQuality provides Recruitment, Talent Management, and Management Coaching services to meet your organizations needs. Call us at 416.413.1177 or visit our website for more information.

Using Infographics for Business Reporting

Last week we looked at Big Data, and how important analytical and communications skills are to businesses trying to turn numbers into useful information. A current trend is the use of Infographics, a visual communication method that represents key facts with statistics and graphic images to tell a story or make a point.

David Beckman, Executive Director, Pisces Foundation, in writing about Infographics said;

"It is hard to miss the rise of the infographic as a form of communication. Infographics are part of a broader trend toward greater data visualization, which has many forms connected by a shared desire to translate data into usable information that can be digested quickly. They are all over the place. Virtually all major news outlets use them. They are the subject of blogs, including one devoted to "cool" infographics and one that features a new infographic every day, titled not unsurprisingly, The Daily Infographic. There is even a website that uses an infographic to chart the rise and use of, you guessed it, infographics."

Certainly governments use Infographics, newspapers and special interests groups, but don't be surprised to see them turn up in the boardroom. Brenda Van Camp, International Head of Marketing Strategy & Client Insight, Christie's, commented, "Breaking away from the standard presentation tools we have used in the past really helps everyone engage with, and be excited about what we are doing."

One idea is to use an Infographic at the beginning of a report instead of an Executive Summary. Make sure the graphics you choose are suitable for your corporate culture, otherwise you may reduce the impact of your presentation.  Here is a blog about DYI Infographics if you decide to design in-house.

Learn more about using Infographics in Business - SlideShare presentation below by Zabisco - it may give you some ideas on using Infographics to communicate your business data or proposal.

Infographics - A Business Tool, by Marcus Marritt, Zabisco from Zabisco Digital


HireQuality provides Recruitment, Talent Management, and Management Coaching services to meet your organizations needs. Call us at 416.413.1177 or visit our website for more information.