Beyond the Numbers

The number five has been appearing frequently in recent calls with customers. That, along with the challenge of retention. "I need: five nurses, five CNA’s, five paramedics, five sales reps, five SDR’s"… When hiring in higher volume, we often resort to a standard job description, repetitive interview questions, and consistently hiring similar individuals. How do you differentiate and make each hiring profile unique? Also, why would you? Wouldn't that just slow the process down?

Across industries today, hiring teams are grappling the most with retention and the strategic qualification of candidates. I've encountered the question "what’s your guarantee" on every new client call in 2024… Let's delve into that for a minute. The candidate guarantee. I can only guarantee that we’re interviewing for your culture, evaluating based on your team’s structure and leadership philosophies, beyond skill sets and performance. Beyond that, it’s on the business and the leadership team to retain people. So instead of pointing fingers, let’s discuss how you can craft your process to hire in higher numbers and avoid the revolving door.

Your job description only conveys so much and asks limited questions. Frankly, most candidates don’t read them. It's the interviews that will shed light on the intangibles, the factors that attract people to your company and make them want to stay. Someone asked me the other day, "do you go after passive candidates or people that are actively looking"? I delved into the ‘why’ behind the question, and the answer was that she wanted people who were actively looking because passive individuals don’t want to leave their current role. It became evident that this team has significant areas of improvement around their interview process and further engagement with employees after they’ve started in a new role.

We scratched the surface of hiring for retention in my past post, and now we're going to explore this topic further - starting with an internal examination of the intangibles, beyond the job description, beyond what you think you need on paper and on the surface.

Look at your current team today and consider the team dynamic, how people interact with each other, and what your team is lacking. You may need to find five others with the same skill sets and certifications, but what is missing on your team related to the intangibles? E.g., energy, motivation, interpersonal skills, experience in other industries and responsibilities, leadership capabilities, etc.

Let’s roll with the number five…

Write down five things that are lacking on the team.

These five things are where you need to focus your hiring efforts and your line of interview questions. Now, let’s look at these five areas you’ve identified and make a list of five questions you can ask someone to help uncover the answer. For instance, let’s say I have a team of five people with 1-2 years of experience. That’s a lot of hand-holding, training, and stepping in to help with personal and professional development. It would make sense to bring someone into the mix with more experience to help guide the team.

Years of experience will not cut it in this scenario - you can’t just hire someone because they have five years’ experience versus one; you’ll need someone who is humble, coachable themselves, and eager to take on a pseudo-team-lead role without the title. And you need to ensure you have the bandwidth and resources to offer this person a strong track to lead a team.

So, we need someone who is:

• Humble

• Coachable

• Eager to get into leadership

Here are some questions you can ask someone who fits this ideal candidate profile:

Humble:

• "Tell me about a time when you had to work with someone who was difficult to get along with?"

• "Tell me about a time where you disagreed with a coworker or client"

Coachable:

• "Please share something you learned in your current role/company"

• "Tell me about a leader you’ve had that you admired or learned something from"

Eager to get into leadership:

• "Talk to me about your goals in the next three years"

• "Tell me about a time where you helped or coached a teammate"

If you want to hire talent that stays and closes gaps on your team, you need to identify those gaps first. How can we expect people to perform, do what we need, and stick around if we don’t set those expectations properly?

Start here, before you even write the job description. Think about your current team, and if you’re a startup and don’t have a team to compare, start with the qualities you need to hire for rather than just the resume. Personally, I’m on the fence with the guarantee companies have been asking me for lately, but I can guarantee that if you’re not doing this today, you’ll see drastic changes in the quality of your hires when you do.

How to work with me:

Recruiting: contract or per-placement hiring. Reach me here.

Writing: Freelance writing for blogs and publications. Reach me  here.
Recruiting and Interviewing guides are available here. 

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