The Headhunter Rules-
What Headhunters Can Teach You About Getting Better at Hiring
Interviewing is really a simple game. It's the people and
paper that make it complex.
If you think about it, there are five major elements present
when you sit down to interview someone:
1. The candidate
2. His resume
3. You
4. Your job description
5. The clock
Guess which are most important?? Go ahead, I'll give you a
few minutes while I hum the theme from Jeopardy.
The first most important is the clock!
That's Headhunter Rule #1: life is a zero-sum game, meaning
that if you use up all your available interview activity on
people, questions or activities that don't help you hire the right person, you're out of time. And you don't get it back,
ever.
For the headhunter that means he doesn't take home any pay.
For you it means that when you hire, it will largely be a
coin-toss as to whether you've found someone who can do
the work!
The second most important element of an interview is...(drum roll) what you know about your own job!!
That's Headhunter Rule #2: if you're going to generate
the right applicants, interview well and hire the best, you
have to know the right things about your job. At the right
level of detail to make it useful in an interview.
The problem most people make when they sit down to
interview is that they have a general understanding (even
managers and business owners) of what makes someone
successful on the job.So they interview in general, and the winner is usually the
one with the most sincere look, the best resume, or the
most well-prepared answers.
All of which are nice, but can be prepared for any candidate
with an 'Ace Your Interview' book...like an actor preparing
a character for an Oscar-winning movie. You may like them and hire them, and they can't do the work.
You're the next least important. In fact, done properly you
should be able to hand interviewing over to people who
have more at stake than you and more knowledge of the
job to interview more ruthlessly than you. Believe me, the owners and managers I work with are
always the easiest interviews, the team members (properly
trained) are always the toughest! If you're holding on to the hiring reigns tightly you may be
eliminating the best set of eyes you could put on a candidate!
And coming in at the end are the candidate and their resume.
That's right. In the end, if you've prepared correctly, candidates
and resumes are interchangeable fodder for the hiring machine you've created.
I know, you believe in finding your one true love...but
believing that there's one 'Special Person' out there for
your job will lull you into some really bad habits.
You should give absolutely ZERO leverage or credence
to a candidate or his resume (his marketing blurb) until they
prove themselves worthy.
If they can't, good. That's Headhunter Rule #3: The primary
job of the interview is to weed out the non-hackers. When
the experienced, motivated, manageable one who's right for the job shows up, he
won't mind you interviewing the snot out of him...he'll
appreciate it!
But everyone else will be weeded out to proptect your
money, relationships and team.
That's how headhunters (the good ones anyway) do it. That's how you should do it!
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Find and hire talented, committed people
