Be a good listener. It’s questioning. A good listener is a person
who questions what they’ve
been told. I’ve learned to never
take the first answer as a given.
It doesn’t mean people lie — it
just means the more you probe,
the more you understand and
the more of a good listener you
are. If you just listen to what
people are telling you and take
it, how much did you really get?
The best question I can ever
ask anybody is to understand
why certain things are what they
are. It’s very useful because you try to get behind a person’s view.
I learn a lot if you just try to
understand why certain things
are the way they are and why
people think the way they do.
The Socratical method is pretty
amazing, actually.
Hire good people. Our ability to
work with our clients and get
them to do what’s required is
what makes us successful. To do
that, you do have to handle people and establish relationships.
You have to embrace their
concerns, empathize with them
and work with them. The ability
to deal with people and handle
people is the biggest requirement from a broad recruitment
perspective.
The other is character — honesty, integrity — because we are so spread out and our people
are primarily by themselves or
in small groups delivering to
clients all over the world. It’s
impossible to manage them on-site — you don’t have executive
management in every project.
They’re out there, so when you
do get a call, you do read a
report, you do get feedback, it
needs to be accurate, upfront,
open and honest. If you have
those two characteristics, we try
to work out the rest.
Have a hiring process. If I visit
and I’m going to spend four
days in the unit, they’re setting
me up with four or five interviews that they wanted to hire,
so I try — and I want my management to do the same — to
spend the time interviewing as
many people as you can at different levels. The more people
you get to see a candidate, the
more different views you have.
I always try to put on a sort of
tough, managerial, naysayer
view to interview people I’m
recruiting. Different views are
very appropriate.
It’s just not a process of interviews. We have interviews, then
most people come in for what
we call an assessment center.
They’ll be in the office for a day,
and they have multiple interviews and have to build case
studies and present. They get
challenged, and they present to
a panel, and then they’re ranked
amongst all of them so we get
the best. Then there’s perhaps a
last interview that’s required. It’s
a complex process, which has
been very helpful.
HOW TO REACH: Proudfoot Consulting, (404) 260-0600 or www.proudfootconsulting.com
