Interviewing for selection

INTERVIEWING FOR SELECTION ...

I was discussing with a Senior Manager on a particular resume on its suitability for the position that we had in our organisation. "Call him for an interview. let's grill him..." was the response from the Manager.

Are we interviewing for Selection or Rejection???

In my experience I had seen 2 types of Managers. One who would ask questions in an interview to understand if the candidate will fit in for the position and the second who would question to prove they know more than the candidate. Most of the time it is the second type of manager who would struggle to fill in the positions.

In today's job market where talent is becoming scarce we need to understand that the candidates also has the right to evaluate the interviewing manager and the organisation on whether it is a place worth investing their career with. This is the reason why the number of people taking an offer and not joining  is in the increasing trend.

According to me we need to interview for selection which means we need to look for the four "A's" when we interview a candidate:

Adapatable

Every company has its own culture and way of working. will this candidate fit into our way of working is what we need to assesse in an interview process.

Acceptable

Most of the positions in any organisation is interdependant and it is very important the person who is going to occupy the position needs to be acceptable to the team which would work with this position towards achieving the organisational objective.

Absorption

When we recruit a person we would expect the person to observe what is happening, understand the expectations and act accordingly. The absorption capacity of the candidate should be assessed, if you want someone who can start contributing right from day 1.

Accomodate

Off late the tendency of recruiters is to pay more salary to a new recruit than the salary levels of exisitng people. Ofcourse we need to pay more than what he/she is getting and if we want a good candidate we need to pay more. But we need to understand this will send a wrong message within the company and we need to decide whether we can afford to loose the existing people.

This does not mean we need to take sub-standard candidates to fit our compensation structure, but be aware of the decisions that we are taking and the consequences of the same.

I strongly believe, for any recruitment to be successful, we need to hire the candidate with the right attitude and cultural fit more than for the knowledge or skill or the kind of experience and company the candidate worked for. Managers should also assess themselves (honestly) for their recruitment skill by looking at how many of the recruitment decisions they made have been successful in the past.