Know what questions to ask. There are some specific questions that you do want to ask during interviews because you do need to get an understanding of people’s backgrounds, where they came from. One thing you can do is go through someone’s career from A to Z. What did they do when they were in school? Did they work? You could be looking for someone who has a lot of work experience at an early age or someone who had to work their way through school. You might be looking for signs of a good work ethic, which is very important. Some of it is just basic conversation, just talking to someone, getting to know who they are and what makes them tick.
It is good to have multiple perspectives, especially when you’re interviewing for key positions in the company. It’s good to have multiple people interview a candidate and share their impressions back and forth. One person might notice something that someone else won’t.
From there, you can sit down one on one with the other people who are in the process. Then you can sit down as a group to see if there are some common things that people are feeling. Sometimes answers given to multiple people don’t really match. Sometimes when you look at a career trajectory, there are some disconnects in there, so you can get into some of those. Sometimes if you can notice those things and home in on them, you can figure some things out about somebody and about their career and how it unfolded. You can find out if someone really does have a good work ethic, if they really did the things they said they did.
Train, but don’t micromanage. You need to provide support and training, but it can be easy to overmanage the process, as well. Especially at the senior level, you’re bringing people in because they’re smart, creative and aggressive, [and] you don’t want to unduly constrain that. You want to set the parameters, but you don’t want to constrain those talents.
Getting an idea of how much structure someone needs is something that really depends on the area for which you are hiring. There are quantitative and qualitative ways to measure that. If you take marketing for example, there are certain metrics to look at. You look at how effective the marketing is. In a business like ours, which is largely a direct marketing business, you look at how long it takes to develop leads, how well those leads convert into customers.
When you get into things in marketing that are more qualitative, you have to judge the results of what those things are and the success those programs are having. Then you also look at the creation of new programs, starting and testing new programs, and the combination of creativity and discipline that goes into that.
In sales, you can also measure results with some specific metrics. In some other areas like IT and finance, it has to do with accuracy, timeliness of reporting, how well your systems are operating, how efficiently information is provided and those kinds of things. So it is very specific to the department. Some of it is really based on measurements, and some of it is really based on feel.
How to reach: Rotobrush International LLC, (817) 310-2300 or www.rotobrush.com
