Most of us spent more time in the hospital/office with our colleagues than we spend at home with our partner, children and family members. So employing the right person is crucial for a positive and healthy work environment. This can therefore be a daunting task however you can implement simple but effective recruitment tools and asking the right questions which will steer you in the right direction.
Effective Job Description
It is vital to develop a detailed job description in order to identify the tasks that the candidate will be responsible for. This will enable you and your recruitment consultant to cross reference past work experience to your job description.
Person Specification
Identifying the personal attributes that you would ideally want the candidate to have will enable the recruitment consultant to test this with recruitment tools such as specific interviewing questions and specific employment reference questions. Keep your company’s values in mind when drafting your person specification.
Selection Process
Working closely with your recruitment consultant to establish relevant behavioral based questions to test whether the candidate fits the job and person specification. Exploring past work experience and the candidate’s involvement is key. A candidate can make a statement such as ‘my company made record sales whilst I worked for the company’. Investigating what the candidate’s individual contribution was towards the sales is vital.
Skills vs Personal Attributes
What to do if the candidate fits the job description but not the person specification or visa versa? If the candidate ticks all the boxes for the person specification, then training can be provided by the company to equip the candidate with the relevant skill. For example, if the candidate is not familiar with Excel but have be proficient in Excel then he/she can attend a short course. Generally, skills can be learned and mastered over time, some can be learned quickly others can be learned with more structured and theoretical training.
However, what if the candidate fits the job description and not the person specification? Let’s look at a scenario, if one of your company values is accountability and the candidates employment references indicate that the candidate did not react favorably to positive criticism given during performance appraisals nor did the candidate improve on areas of development despite feedback given then it is probable that they do no inhibit accountability as a personality trait.
Personal attributes are generally lifelong behaviors that are part of individuals make up and personality. These are much harder to change and takes much longer to master.