Who should you choose to select your who?
Selecting talent is an art, not a science. There really is no secret formula for adding certain factors together to result in a successful selection every time. Selection is about deciding what you want and using good discernment to identify people who can meet the requirements.
There are certainly selection best practices and processes such as using behavioral interviewing, referencing, team interviews, pre-employment assessments and job shadowing. In the end, however, the real skills belong to those evaluators making the selection decisions.
Who should you choose to select the talent in your organization? Consider these characteristics:
Choose those that best match your culture. If you have a culture that you want to preserve and grow, then the people who select the talent in your organization need to be representatives of your purpose, mission and values. They not only need to align with those elements, they need to believe in them passionately so that they can select talent who will represent and believe in those key elements of the culture. Their character should match the character of the organization.
Choose those whose competency matches the role. It was not so long ago that many organizational leaders believed that anyone could do the “people” work. For some reason, leaders did not see that those who recruit and select talent require a specialized skill set just like accounting, coding, legal, procurement and other fields. Fortunately, that has changed and organizations are understanding the need for highly skilled talent acquisition and talent management professionals on their staff. Choose people with a track record for making good decisions. Even entry level talent can be assessed based on decision making in academic performance, volunteerism and extra-curricular activities. Effective decision making is the critical skill for someone choosing The Who in your organization.
Choose those whose chemistry matches the team. A dysfunctional talent acquisition team will create dysfunction in the organization and be incapable of attracting and selecting the talent the organization needs. Too many open jobs for too long and productivity in the business suffers. Even more importantly, customer service suffers. Talent acquisition and talent management staff need to be collaborators and influencers. The right chemistry on this team will help them be successful in gaining the trust of organizational leadership. Gaining trust will allow them to be successful in finding and keeping the right Who.
Use the 3 Cs criteria to select the talent that will choose the talent in your organization and you may find that candidate quality and employee retention results improve. Will there still be selection mistakes? Most certainly, because talent selection is an art, not a science. Art is messy sometimes, but the best artists eventually create masterpieces.
What about your organization? What are your best practices for selecting the people who select who for you? How are you ensuring that you have extraordinary talent to select your team members?
By Dee Ann Turner
