I had two clients this week who decided they did not want to interview candidates because they looked “too jumpy”. I pressed for more details. Their perception was that the candidates might not stick around for long.
Meanwhile, the candidates were asking me about the company and whether it was stable. They wanted to know if it had a good history, if it was Canadian or if it has headquarters elsewhere and what the future looked like.
Does that sound like they were looking to jump ship after six months? Of course not.
It is ironic, that hiring managers hang so much on whether a candidate demonstrates long tenure at each position. Meanwhile, they cannot offer any guarantee that in two years the company or even the role will be the same in two years.
Mergers and acquisitions, retirements, market downturns and technology upturns all affect the way companies conduct business and the humans they need to be successful. Employees do their best to stay relevant and keep up, but at the end of the day, leaders choose to swap out those employees for others with different skills.
Just because someone gets restructured does not mean that they do not work hard or offer great skills. It means they were not the right person at that moment in the organization.
A well-structured interview will bring out the skills, experience and attitudes offered by a candidate. A constructive reference check will verify those characteristics based on past performance. An independent assessment can be used to predict how the person will react in a new environment.
Those are three solid ways to validate that what you see in an interview is what you will get when the person is in the seat.
Sure, it’s an investment in time and possibly money but it does allow a hiring manager to de-risk a hiring decision. It also allows them to tap into all the good talent not just the small slice of the candidate community that offers a particular career pattern.
As Forest Gump said, “life is a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get…. so try them all.
Recruiter's Couch 