#3- Solutions for the Top 3 Problems We Solve for Hiring Managers: Third Solution

Here we are with our final Tip #3 in our mini-series for hiring managers!

In case you missed it, we recently launched our One Eighty Collective website, and in celebration, this week, we are providing solutions for a Hiring Manager’s Top 3 Common Hiring Issues. You can check out the announcement here, Tip #1 here, and yesterday’s tip #2 here.

Topic #3: Clarity & Alignment

Problem: You’ve been interviewing for months, and none of the candidates are “the one.”

The Real Issue: You, your hiring team, or your recruiters aren’t aligned on what you’re looking for.

Solution: Do the work up-front to figure out and align with your team on your ideal candidate profile.

Opportunity Cost: You’ll spend weeks, if not months, interviewing candidate after candidate, never being confident in making a hiring decision.

As a Hiring Manager, you have two critical jobs that will make/break hiring success for any role:

1. Identify what success looks like in this role.

a. Get a clear vision for what this “well-oiled” machine will look like. If you hired your most ideal candidate, what would things look like in 6 months? What could they improve? What could they grow into? Candidates want to know they’re making an impact, so you need to be able to speak to the wins and outcomes they can look forward to.

b. Align with your team. Ask each person how they would define a successful relationship with this new hire. Find out what they need in order to work effectively with someone. Not only will this clarify the vision you’re pitching to a candidate, but it will also give you insight into how to set your new hire up for a successful working relationship with each person.

2. Build your “ideal candidate profile.”

a. One of our favorite things to do with clients is play the “Weird Science” game. (If you’re not familiar with the movie, two high school kids write a computer program to create their perfect woman in this 1985 cult classic. Aside from the glaring objectification and questionable plot holes, it’s a good exercise for our purposes.) Based on what success looks like in this role, make a list of the qualities and career experiences that would help someone be successful in this role.

b. Align with your team. Get agreement on the profile and talk with them about who will be evaluating each area during the interview process (as discussed in our Interview Rubric guide).

Some questions to help get clarity on the ideal candidate profile:

• What types of problems has this person solved before?
• How will this person influence you and your team?
• What’s the personality that will integrate well into your team - how do they need to communicate, engage, collaborate in order to succeed?
• How will you nurture and foster their success?
• What experience will allow them to ramp up quickly in the role?
• What things can they learn as they grow if they don’t have the skills already?
• What are the short-term wins in this role?
• What’s the growth trajectory, and what baseline skills or personality would be best suited to grow into that?
• What are your non-negotiables in terms of experience?
• How important is a relevant degree?
  

At One Eighty Collective, one of our Core Values is transparency. What we’ve found is that you can’t get to transparency without first gaining clarity. We spend quite a bit of time in the early days of a search meeting with the team and asking them the questions that will help give us (and oftentimes themselves) the clarity they need to identify and evaluate the right candidate pool, and ultimately, the right hire.