Recruitment, Part 2: Who are you really hunting?

You probably have a pretty clear idea in mind of the type of person you’d like to employ and the skills you’d like them to bring to the table. Nevertheless, please do a little planning before launching into The Hunt.

Ask your other employees or colleagues who they think the business needs – especially those who will be working alongside the successful applicant. You’re looking for them to brainstorm both the perfect traits and skills. Even in the unlikely event that they don’t come up with any new ideas, getting people involved in the process and respecting their opinions is just one more way to get people to take responsibility for the culture of where they work.

Next, try to list some personality traits that neither you nor your team is strong in. You probably envision your perfect candidate to be someone who fits into the team because they are very similar to you and your staff. However, the perfect candidate is probably someone who compliments the team rather than fitting in because they have the same core values but have strengths where you currently have weaknesses. For example, maybe your existing team is great at attention to detail so someone with excellent ‘big picture’ skills would be an interesting addition. Diversity takes a little more management but in the long term brings about a robust and dynamic business.

Draft up your initial ideas, your colleagues ideas, and those complimentary traits into a list of ‘desirable’ and ‘essential’ criteria. Standard practice. Now have a play with that list and pretend someone has all the desirables but none of the essentials, and another candidate is the opposite. Technically the candidate with all the essentials but none of the desirables should be the more employable, but are they? Or is there something in your essentials list that, really truly, isn’t essential? Is something on your desirable list, like the right attitude, actually an essential? Getting this list right by using your vision for your culture and knowing your weaknesses will really help attract the right candidates. What if you had ‘degree in events’ on your essentials list and were discouraging experienced candidates? Or even un-experienced ones who had the energy and creativity your already very experienced team needed? You’d be missing out on new ideas and paying a lower salary because you assumed a degree was what your business needed. Or what if ‘full-time’ work was assumed when really, for the right person, you could manage 9am-3pm school hours?

My point is: if you have your cultural values worked out and adhere to them, then you can and should think outside the box with other aspects of recruitment.