In honor of Valentine's Day, I think it's appropriate to write about finding your perfect match. No, I'm not referring to dating; I'm referring to hiring. Your success as a manager depends at least in part on your ability to hire well. A good team can make your job easier than you ever dreamed; a bad team can spell doom for your career.
The first key to successful hiring is found in the job description; a good job description (read: realistic, detailed, and measurable) makes the entire process flow more smoothly, because it tells you exactly what skills and attributes the candidate needs to have. A good job description also provides an accurate representation of the job to the potential candidates, which helps them make an informed decision when you make an offer. But most job descriptions (at least, the ones I've read) are not good by those definitions. In fact, most folks seem to have more realistic, reasonable criteria for a potential Saturday night date than they have for the person who's going to be responsible for keeping the books. You can't get what you want if you don't define what you want.
Responsibilities
Document the responsibilities this person will have, and the tasks s/he'll perform. Put down everything; you can filter later if necessary. Is this person going to manage others? Write code? Develop documentation? Analyze data? Facilitate meetings? What does a typical day/week/month look like? If there's another employee who already performs this job, ask her for input.
Requirements
Now that you know what this person is going to do, you need to identify the skills s/he'll need to do it. This is where many job descriptions fall short. You need to define the requirements for the job in the same way you'd communicate expectations to an employee: the requirements should be clear, specific, and measurable (or, in the case of soft requirements like "strong communications skills," objectively identified in some manner). It's important to be clear because ambiguity breeds frustration in recruiters; if your recruiter thinks that "good interpersonal skills" means extreme diplomacy when what you really want is someone who's direct to the point of bluntness, your recruiter will soon start pulling his hair out after you shoot down candidate after candidate. Here are a few examples of poorly-written requirements, and better ways to define them. For the record, these all came from actual job descriptions.
Don’t write this |
Instead, write this |
Æ Strong written communications skills |
© Writes grammatically, clearly, and appropriately for the audience |
Æ Self-directed |
© Able to prioritize workload and manage responsibilities with little to no supervision |
Æ Strong computer skills |
© Able to create PivotTables to analyze data; able to use advanced functions of Excel; can use styles, fields, and protection in MS Word to develop templates and forms. |
Æ Must demonstrate exceptional organizational skills |
© Able to track and manage deliverables for up to 20 projects simultaneously |
Æ Strong followup skills |
© Communicates with resources on a weekly basis to monitor project status; updates key stakeholders on a monthly basis |
In addition to these documented requirements, you'll probably have some other key attributes or personality traits that you think of as deal-breakers; these might include strong ethics, creativity, the ability to play well with others, and other characteristics that are difficult to quantify. That's okay; when we get to interviewing, I'll help you figure out how to separate the good interviews from the good candidates (hint: the best candidate is not always the person with the fastest, smoothest answers).
Before I send you on your merry way to spend the rest of the evening with someone you love, I want to caution you about another requirements pitfall: Know and clearly define the "must-haves" vs. the "nice-to-haves." Is it really necessary for the candidate to have an advanced degree in Medieval History, or will any History degree (or a different degree, or 8 years of related experience) suffice? Does your technical writing candidate really need to know your particular obscure desktop publishing application, or will you accept a great writer who needs to learn the software?
Keep in mind, there are no wrong answers here; you can make your requirements as stringent as you like. However, if your requirements are very narrow, then A) your pool of qualified applications could be very small, and B) you'd best be prepared to pay a premium salary.
In Part II of this series, I'll help you sift through the piles of resumes you've received, and give you tips on preparing for your interviews.
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