By Ross Campbell, Toronto Financial Services & Insurance Recruiter
As part of my blog series, Hire Wisdom: 12 Keys to Successful Hiring, I will dissect Key #6 – Seek Counsel.
Imagine you had your very own board of directors for your life to help you make wiser decisions before you made tough choices. Guess what? You probably do; you just haven’t learned how to identify and tap into your network. Tapping into your network for advice on hiring decisions can pay off ten-fold, helping find you that A+ hire and often making the hiring process a much smoother one.
Why Seek Hiring Advice?
You know the saying “two heads are better than one”? This is particularly true when it comes to hiring decisions. The point is to get an objective eye on your hiring criteria and hiring decisions; and not just a second opinion, but a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth opinion from trusted sources.
Who You Should Ask
Don’t just throw it out to your social media contacts and hope for wise counsel. Do get advice from people you can trust, preferably who are subject matter experts and who have more experience than you in the area. For starters, you should ask your internal stakeholders for their input – ask your peers, bosses, and those on your team. Then put the feelers out to your external stakeholders and industry specialists.
Remember you don’t have to take the advice from all of your advisors, as they may have different perspectives, but listen to their reasoning. Why did they come to that conclusion and does it make sense? Be well aware of people’s biases. No one advisor is good enough.
What You Should Ask
There are three main areas of the hiring process you should seek counsel on; hiring strategy, interview methods, and of course the final hiring decision.
For the hiring strategy, start by asking your network if there is anyone they would recommend for the role. Have they ever hired for a similar role? Who do they have working in a similar function at their organization? What characteristics make one successful in the role?
In terms of interview methods, there are a ton of options. Here at IQ PARTNERS we use a Topgrading interview style regardless of the role, but you may find that another method works best for you. Ask your trusted advisors about their most successful interviews and their methods for assessing candidates.
Once you’ve narrowed your search down to a ‘short-list’ of three to five candidates, have other internal stakeholders sit down with each of them. Different personalities, assessment methods, and so on can bring out different traits in the candidate, and the more you know the better equipped you’ll be to make that final hiring decision. Be aware of internal stakeholders that may have biases against hiring new; you may want to be present in those interviews.
Most of us seek counsel naturally, but as our work lives get busy and time is a factor we can often make important decisions without seeking other opinions and strategies. Stay humble and be wise enough to seek the advice of others in your hiring decisions. Seek many advisors in fact. This can save you a lot of time, money and heartache after the fact. We ask for advice in life so why wouldn’t we ask for advice when hiring?
Check out the rest of the series, Hire Wisdom: 12 Keys to Successful Hiring. Learn more about Toronto Financial Services & Insurance Recruiter Ross Campbell and connect with him on LinkedIn.
IQ PARTNERS is a Recruitment Agency with offices in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, & Halifax. We help companies hire better, hire less & retain more. We have teams of specialist recruiters in Financial Services & Insurance, Marketing Communications & Media, Emerging Tech & Telecom, Consumer Goods & Retail, B2B & Industrial, Technology, Accounting & Finance, HR & Operations, Energy, Mining & Engineering, Life Sciences, and Construction, Property & Real Estate. IQ PARTNERS has its head office in Toronto and operates internationally via Aravati Global Search Network. Click here to view current job openings and to register with us.
