Leadership Insights

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Recruit Differently – Behaviour Trumps Knowledge!

A well-known HR discovery in relation to recruitment is;

“We recruit on knowledge and skills, and sack on behaviour.”

This has some huge implications for recruitment! In particular, the types of interview questions we ask applicants. We need to focus more on candidates attitude to work, behaviours under stress, approach to conflict, enthusiasm in a team setting. But the challenge is, none of these discoveries will occur by asking the person for their knowledge and skills in these areas.

Who in their right mind would answer the following way;

Q). Are you willing to work as part of a team?

A). “Not really, I’m often prickly when working in teams, and have had a history of rubbing people up the wrong way.”

No chance! Everyone will answer the same way, with a platitude about working in your team. A more useful question could be;

“How do you go about handling differences and conflicts in a team, and provide an example of how you have responded to one in the past?”

Also, we can tend to ‘overestimate’ our capacity as supervisors to change or modify a new recruit’s behaviours and skills.Yes, its true people do develop and grow over time, but we must question how much time it will take to resolve the skill gap. Very often we need new recruits to hit the ground running, and a substantial skill gap can take years to overcome or may never be resolved. Skills that relate to getting along with colleagues or the supervisor are particularly difficult to modify, as it relates to a person’s values and social skills. From my experience, it’s very difficult to teach someone to appreciate the values you have for your company; they either do or they don’t!

With the benefit of hindsight, so many of us can think back to the recruitment process and know we should have been more rigorous in looking at that issue. Often the ‘gap’ goes on to haunt the manager and the organisation. Sometimes the nightmare begins just after the probation period ends. The skill gap is likely some sort of quirky behaviour or comment made by an applicant at interview. It’s the sort of thing that appears unimportant to many on a panel, but should grab attention! In an environment when each candidate is putting their best foot forward, we need to be alert for ‘behavioural’ signs they might not be the best fit. Sometimes the concerns may be a good ‘hunch’, or a ‘practice wisdom’, and we need to back ourselves to at least explore the issue further in an interview process.

Next time you are recruiting, ensure the panel (in advance) is clear on the ‘behaviours, traits and qualities’ that are most crucial to performing the role in question. This is a typically overlooked area for interview question design. If you have indications there is a skill gap or value concern, don’t back your ability to fix this through supervision and training. Conduct further analysis during the interview or set up a secondary interview process. The time it takes to do so, will be insignificant in comparison to the realisation your new recruit won’t be able to change.

Suggested Interview Preparation

Step 1: Start deleting questions in your interview process that simply ask for a politically correct opinion.

Step 2: Don’t ask questions that you have already learnt from the culling process, for example, what experience have you had with…..? It’s in their resume!

Step 3: Start thinking of questions that illicit feedback about ‘past experiences’. Tell me what you did….how have you handled this type of situation….what have you learnt about your areas for improvement?

Step 4: Start asking questions about ‘scenarios’ that reflect the job role. What would you do in this situation? For example, at a recent customer service job interview, we asked the applicants to participate in a role play with a grumpy customer to see how they would behave in this setting. Very revealing about attitude and skills.

Remember the revolutionary insight common to great managers (Buckingham & Coffman; 1999);

People don’t change much.

Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out.

Try to draw out what was left in.

That is hard enough.