Headhunting experience-use interviews to defend your candidates)

March 21

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By Lou Adler,The Adler Group(March 21, 2006 at 08:41 AM)

If you have recommended excellent talent to the recruitment team, but you are finally done for all sorts of silly reasons, you should learn how to defend your applicant.

To some extent, you need to provide specific evidence to combat decisions made by emotion, prejudice, intuition, or overly narrow professional skills and abilities. Many outstanding people are rejected for incorrect reasons, but such a choice is not proven by sufficient evidence. Many people are admitted to the store because of their feelings, prejudices, and intuition.

You can take some actions to better defend your candidate:

1. Understand the work.Before you start looking for someone, ask the hiring manager what he needs to do. Let the manager define the main projects and challenges that he will deal. Then ask the manager to describe how talents can accomplish the same task better than ordinary people. I call these documents a performance Overview. By communicating with the best employees in similar positions, prepare a general performance Overview in advance to find out the differences between them and ordinary employees. In this way, you only need to ask the hiring manager to modify your performance profile, instead of starting from scratch. Taking a lot of time to prepare a performance Overview proves that your understanding of the job will also add points to your team.
2. Become a good interviewer.You need to be a better interviewer than a hiring manager customer. If you want to defend your candidate, you will not be subject to superficial and narrow assessments. One way is to get an example of the achievements described in the Performance Overview. If you spend at least ten minutes digging into the biggest team of candidates and personal achievements related to work, you will have sufficient evidence to overcome general and flawed evaluations. From the technical aspect, Many interviewers have explored some aspects unrelated to their work. Therefore, they must directly contact the actual work needs to check the obvious technical insufficiency of candidates.
3. Use external evidence.Fully armed to defend your candidates. Leverage test results, in-depth certificates and certificates of outstanding work for various candidates. Points to rapid improvement, special bonus, reward and salary increase as evidence of his outstanding achievements.
4. Do not use opposition as the answer.This is a trick. Many people do not need all the evidence to justify the argument. Recruiters need to confront this kind of tendency to judge personal abilities immediately based on a small amount of information. Unless the recruitment team has enough strict evidence to make a good decision, you have to keep defending the candidate if you think that his rating is unfair.
5. Exploitation"Keep it tight"Sales Techniques.Even if you do not have the evidence to defend the candidate, make sure that you can provide it to save the recruitment manager's decision. "If I can provide further evidence to prove that the candidate is better than your initial evaluation, can you at least consider it and postpone your judgment for a few days ?" Of course, you 'd better find evidence.
6. Organize more specialized group interviews.If you are a good interviewer, why not organize a special group interview? In this way, everyone can hear the same information. By in-depth mining examples of outstanding candidates during the interview, other interviewers also learn more about the candidates. The key is that one person supports interview meetings and other group members will ask questions about the details and examples. If you are in the interview room, why don't you host the interview? In this way, you can ensure that the candidate's achievements are clearly understood by everyone.
7. Instruct managers on proper interviews.If you can teach managers how to improve their interview skills, you will immediately be recognized as an invaluable asset of industry experts and recruitment teams. You can consider using the performance-based interview process I recommend.
8. Host the report meeting.To ensure that the surface information is not used to exclude or hire candidates, the recruiters must attend the report meeting. Collective judgment is a good way to assess capabilities, if every participant puts forward strict evidence. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. Generally, the opinions of leaders are dominant, or the opinions of one or two people exceed those of others. To prevent this, it is recommended that the CMB host the report meeting to ensure that all evidence is taken into account objectively.

Each step described above may take two to three hours for each candidate. For the three candidates, it would take a whole day to investigate. However, if one of the three Members is hired, you do not have to perform a survey from the beginning. Repeated surveys take one to two weeks, which can be used for new searches, networking, phone calls, screening, and recruitment.

Learning how to defend candidates can increase your productivity by 50-100%. I think it is very cost-effective. The principle is: Find the right information to get twice the result with half the effort.

If you 've ever had a good person you 've presented to the hiring team get blown away for stupid reasons, you 've got to learn how to defend your candidates.

At one level this requires that you present concrete evitions to fight decisions made on emotions, biases, intuition or a too-narrow range of technical skills and competencies. too recommend good people get excluded for the wrong reasons when evition is not used to justify the selection. too average people with great interviewing skills get hired when feelings, prejudices and intuition override judgment.

Here are some things you can do to get started on better defending your candidates:

1. Know the job. Before you start looking for candidates, ask the hiring manager what the person needs to do to be considered successful. have the manager define the key projects and challenges the person is expected to handle. then ask the manager to describe how better people handle these same tasks compared to average people. I call these types of specified ents performance profiles. prepare a preliminary performance profile ahead of time by talking to the best people you 've placed in similar positions and find out what they did differently than the average timer mer. this way, you can ask the hiring manager to modify your preliminary performance profile rather than starting from scratch. doing most of the work to prepare a performance profile ahead of time demonstrates solid job knowledge and will earn you some potential partnership points.

2. Become a good interviewer. You'll need to be a better interviewer than your hiring manager clients if you want CT to defend your candidates from superficial or narrow assessments. one way to do this is to get detailed examples of major accomplishments related to those described in the performance profile. if you spend at least 10 minutes digging into the candidate's biggest team, job-related and individual accomplishments, you'll have plenty of eviments to overcome generalizations and flawed assessments. on the tech side, too implements interviewers dig into areas unrelated to real job needs, so be sure to challenge your candidate's apparent lack of technical depth by relating it directly to the real job requirements.
3. Use more outside evidence. Don't defend your candidates half-armed. use test results, in-depth references and multiple examples of recognition which the candidate encoded ed for doing outstanding work. point to early promotions, special bonuses, awards and raises as evitions of exceptional performance.
4. Don't take no for an answer. This is the recruiter's mantra. too users people make decisions without all the available eviut. A recruiter needs to fight the tendency to judge competency too soon based on minimal information. unless the hiring team has enough hard and fast eviing to make a good depression, you'll need to continue fighting for your candidate if you believe the person is being judged unfairly.
5. Use the "close upon an objection" sales technique. Even if you don't have ready proof to defend your candidate, use the promise of getting it as a way of keeping the hiring manager open-minded. "If I cocould present further eviment that the candidate is far stronger than your initial assessment, wocould you at least reconsider it and postpone your judgment for a few days? "Of course, then you better get the proof.
6. Lead more panel interviews. If you're a good interviewer, why not lead a panel interview? This way, everyone hears the same information. by Digging deep and getting examples of major accomplishments during the interview, the other interviewers learn more about the candidate than they wowould have on their own. the key is to have one person lead the interview session, with the other panel members asking for clarification and examples. if you're in the room, why not lead the interview? This way, you can be sure your candidate's accomplishments are clearly understood by everyone involved.
7. Coach your managers to interview properly. If you can teach your managers how to improve their interviewing skills, you're instantly recognized as an expert in your field and an invaluable member of the hiring team. you might want to consider using the performance-based interviewing process I recommend as part of this.
8. Lead the debriefing session. To ensure that superficial information is not used to eliminate (or hire) a person, it's vital that the recruiter be present during the debriefing session. the collective judgment of the group is a valid means to assess competency if everyone involved presents hard evidence. unfortunately, this is rarely the case. usually the dominant person's opinion prevails or the concerns of one or two people overshadow the positive judgment of others. to prevent this, it's best if the recruiter leads the debriefing session to ensure that all the evidence is considered in an objective manner.

Doing everything described abve probably takes 2-3 additional hours per final candidate. for a slate of three candidates, this collectively adds an additional day's work to the search. however, if one of the three candidates gets hired, you won't have to do the search over again. doing searches over again can take another one to two weeks worth of sourcing, networking, cold-calling, screening, recruiting, etc.

Learning how to defend your candidate's is how you increase your productipartition by 50-100%. to me that's a pretty good trade-off. here's the principle involved here: get better at the right stuff, not more efficient at the wrong stuff.