5 Essential Measurements for Making the Right Hire

By Dr. Ranjit Nair

Effective talent management starts with hiring the right employees—those who can help a company build value and delight its customers.

In fact, studies show that organizations that place emphasis on managing talent strategically and continuously are more successful. According to research by Deloitte, they are three times more likely to report highly engaged employees. These same companies also report financial performance and enhance productivity significantly above their peer group of companies. Simply put, companies that put people over profit tend to do better than those that do not.

Businesses achieve this kind of success as a result of a holistic, people-first talent approach. Strategically focusing on talent acquisition and recruiting with a core philosophy of getting the right fit the first time makes all the difference. Finding talent is a no-brainer, but finding the best-fit talent in terms of skill set, competencies, behaviors, motivators, workplace expectations, and cultural personality is not simple.

In today’s talent management landscape, finding both talent and fit spans personality, work style, and even how your organization is perceived publicly. The next time you’re recruiting talent, start with these five elements to find the right fit the first time.

1. Job benchmarking. Even before advertising a job opening, it is vital to take a close look at the job and its requirements. Many organizations make the fatal mistake of recycling old job descriptions or even committing the greatest sin of all—pulling job descriptions off the Internet and using them in their own recruiting process!

Every job should be assessed in terms of what superior performance will look like for the person filling the role. Start by brainstorming the expected behaviors and skills for the job. By proactively developing a list of ideal-fit characteristics that go beyond the mere job description, you will have a better chance at finding the right talent fit.

With this list in mind, you will be ready to look for things like candidates’ responses to disagreements and challenges, working on a team, dealing with change, and adhering to rules and regulations.

2. Competencies. Soft skills absolutely matter, and this is a component that many companies are pretty good at measuring during the interview process. It's essential to find out if a candidate has the basic competencies needed for a position. Skills such as communicating, negotiating, decision-making, listening, and persuading can make the difference in day-to-day job functions. It’s a simple process to assess candidates in these skills, and if you’ve created a good job benchmark, you can easily determine if a person is a good fit.

Let’s say you are hiring a compliance manager, which may require competencies such as conflict management, problem solving, goal orientation, self-management, and effective written communication. Glossing over these necessary skills will lead to poor performance in the position.

3. Behaviors. Many of us are familiar with DISC profiles: Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness (S), and Compliance (C). Assessing top candidates’ behaviors within these four profiles shows how a person prefers to give and receive information. By understanding behavioral profiles, you can begin to see how a candidate may respond in situations pertinent to your job opening.

For example, if you find that your top candidate has a very low Compliance score for an accounting job that requires following specific reporting rules, you may want to reconsider that hire.

4. Motivators. Even beyond discovering how a candidate might behave in certain situations, it’s ideal to get a look behind the curtain at what motivates your candidate. Sure, most people want success and a job with a nice paycheck, but people can be motivated by very different things: money, status, autonomy, purpose, beliefs, or creative processes, to name a few. Through talent assessment tools you can discover what drives someone to action, as well as insight into whether they will succeed or fail in a job.

If you place someone in a sales role whose primary motivator is being “social” but who scores low “utilitarian,” this may seem like a good fit. Salespeople need to be social, right? The fact is that someone who is driven by the “social” dimension may put focus on making friends over making money (the utilitarian motivator). And in a sales position you need a healthy balance of both.

5. Cultural fit. Recruiters must also assess whether candidates will succeed in the company’s work environment. Using the aforementioned assessment processes, you can get a glimpse into how comfortably candidates will interact within your organization. You will be able to see if their values align with company values, whether they thrive in a flat or open workplace structure, and if they enjoy team collaboration or a more solo approach. At its core, cultural fit means that employees' beliefs, behaviors, and motivators are in sync with the company’s core tenets and day-to-day environment.

A candidate whose behaviors, motivators, competencies, and values are consistent with not only the position but also the company will naturally find success in an organization. If you take the time to assess during the recruiting process, your hires will drive long-term growth and success for your organization, and ultimately save you time and money.