Author: Ross Campbell

Key 10 in my blog series, Hire Wisdom: The 12 Keys to Successful Hiring, is Perform Reference Checks. When I started writing this blog post, all I kept thinking was…“How can I get people to care about reference checks?” That’s because conducting reference checks have become one of the least meaningful parts of the hiring process. People have started to think of them as a final box to check, a task to “get out of the way” when the candidate has all but signed on the dotted line… but they’re wrong! Thinking of reference checks this way is a missed opportunity. Remember, a bad hire is costly, both in time and money – the cost of attrition is one to three times an employee’s salary!

Presenting a low ball offer to a candidate to save a few dollars on their salary is just bad business.
If you want a good employee who will spring out of bed in the morning to come and work for you, and stay for the long run, then pay them what they’re worth. A rookie mistake is to assume the salary you gave the last person in the role is good enough for a future employee. Salaries are dependent on the candidate and the market; how much could they get elsewhere? Remember that last year’s market prices or what you feel the market prices should be are irrelevant. Do some research to ensure the salary you offer is competitive.

Most often a meaningful job with a lower salary will be chosen over a less meaningful job with a higher salary.
But what makes a job meaningful? Opportunities for advancement, feeling challenged, and making a real impact are some of the common factors. Outline how the candidate can progress through the company and how they will be challenged. How does the company as a whole, and that role in particular, make a difference in the world?

It may seem like an impersonal approach to hiring, but I believe that, when used well, ATS’s can actually help you create an exceptional candidate experience, maintain relationships with top candidates, build your company brand, and ultimately attract more top talent. I’ve seen way too many mid-sized and even larger companies who have yet to get on board with an ATS to help them organize job candidates. The right people are the most important part of your company, so you cannot afford not to invest.

In my career in Executive Search, I have been overwhelmed by candidates’ negative experiences with companies throughout the hiring process. A negative experience during this stage can not only lose you the candidate, but also kill your company brand in the marketplace. Also, whoever you do end up hiring will already have a bad taste in their mouth, even before their first day on the job!

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.

In my years in Executive Search, I have interviewed thousands of candidates, and have found that the one quality all successful candidates have is wisdom. I’ve also found that traditional interview techniques tend to focus too much on IQ, EQ, and work experience, and neglect to assess for a candidate’s Wisdom Quotient (WQ).

In my years in Executive Search, I have interviewed thousands of candidates, and have found that the one quality all successful candidates have is wisdom. As Key #5 in my blog series Hire Wisdom: The 12 Keys to Successful Hiring, I will break down How to Perform Quality Assessments: Assessing a Candidate’s Wisdom Quotient (WQ).

Have you ever gone to market for talent without a plan or without a team? It can be overwhelming and result in a poor hiring decision. When companies are unable to recruit top talent, it often comes down to the absence of a talent acquisition strategy or the absence of a team to do it.