How To Use Science To Find The Ultimate Employee

Finding great new employees is usually not easy and many companies have been searching for the secret formula that selects the best candidate for the job. However, does that secret formula even exist? Hiring is not only hard for the employer, hiring is hard for both sides. It´s a costly, time-consuming and uncertain process, where neither of the parties can be entirely sure whether it will be a good fit or not.

 

As many companies have found, it´s impossible to find the perfect formula to ensure you´re only hiring the right fit. However, it is possible to use metrics and processes to help predict good and bad performance and thereby choosing the candidates which are most likely to succeed. The challenge here lies in identifying employee success instead of relying on the information that is readily available, which is what happens in most hiring processes.

 

Here are some concepts that can help you finding the ultimate employee:

 

Referrals

Referrals have long been known as a successful way to get better job candidates. Candidates that get referred have a bigger chance to get called back for an interview, are more likely to get hired and are more likely to stay at the company. And although referrals imply to work because great and smart workers know other great and smart people, science shows that referrals mostly work because they return better fits. Because candidates that were referred by current employees similarly match the company culture and they like the same ways of working, they have significantly higher chances to be a good fit for the company and therefore they tend to produce higher profits per worker and are less likely to quit.

 

Determine attributes of successful hires

Another way to use science to find the ultimate employee is by determining the attributes of successful employees in those roles. Therefore, you need to study your most successful current and previous employees in similar roles and see what attributes, skills and experience made them so successful. This goes beyond the theoretical job description, you should truly investigate the differences between high performers and poor performers in such roles. This will not only help you during scanning the resumes you will receive for your vacancy but also during the interview process.

 

Structure the interview process to check for those attributes

After knowing what attributes a successful candidate should have, you know what to truly search for during your recruitment process and you can develop interview questions and processes to assess those. As we have mentioned in previous posts on this blog, it is very recommendable to use behavioral interview questioning techniques to assess these attributes because it will always give you more insights than normal interview questions. Therefore, make sure to set-up your interview process focused on behavioural interviewing to truly understand whether the candidate would do a good job.

 

Make hiring always a group decision

And finally, it has been proven over and over again that hiring always should be a group decision in order to avoid bad hires. One person can be fooled into something or look over some essential traits that might predict that this actually won´t work out, but by making hiring decisions in a small committee you can avoid such mistakes from happening. A team of people involved in the hiring process naturally will capture more than just a single recruiter or hiring manager and therefore you should always try to make the decision as a group.

 

These are our 4 tips to use science to find your ultimate employee. What other concepts can you think of that will help finding the perfect hire? We would love to read your input in the comments section!

 

 

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