Identify talent
To Warden, the gatekeeper function is one of the most important roles of management in the hiring process. It is up to you, your management team and your human resources staff to ask the right questions and get the right information so that you can make the kind of hires that can help sustain your culture and grow your business.
“You want to make sure there is a fit, so we send candidates for job openings through testing and also a rigorous interview process,” Warden says. “That is how we try to ensure that we’re bringing the right folks into our organization.”
In the interview process, you need to ask the right questions in order to find the candidates who match your organization’s needs. Warden asks many open-ended questions that require more than a “yes” or “no” in response. To drill down and find out what a potential employee brings to the table, particularly where personal values are concerned, you need to get him or her to think and then convey those thoughts.
“Everyone will come to you and tell you they have people skills,” Warden says. “They’ll tell you that they know how to run whatever it is you need them to run. But they have to understand the importance of how we go about it. In our case, they need to understand that we’re a sales-driven company. We have to look at how we drive sales, not just the bottom line. We have the systems to ensure that if we have X amount of sales, we’ll get the requisite amount of profit. The challenge is to get sales, and we look for people who can get sales.”
In later rounds of interviews, once the field has been pared down, Warden and his team will ask candidates situational questions, particularly for management positions. They’re looking for responses that will determine how the prospective employee would handle customers and subordinates in a particular situation.
But even if a candidate gives all the right answers, sometimes you still don’t know if you have the right person until you hire him or her and see the person in action. That is why a thorough interview process needs to be followed with a thorough training process.
“Again, people will know what answers to give when you ask them questions,” Warden says. “That is why we look to evaluate the person over the course of training, to see if they really walk the walk, not just give you the answers you’re looking for.
“Sometimes, there are people who are technically proficient but just don’t have the skills we’re looking for. It’s OK for them to not have the knowledge. We can teach them the processes we need them to know. But it is harder to train people on skills like dealing with people. It’s harder to teach on the importance of coaching and motivating, of not just criticizing but rewarding, about making a celebration over successes. It’s not a perfect system. It’s up to you to evaluate during the training process whether you have a fit or not.”
