By Gillian Seely

Hiring managers sometimes overlook top-notch candidates by focusing only on professional accolades and top-notch degrees.  If you ever find yourself going “YES! I want THAT ONE!” because a candidate looks great on paper and passed your interview questions like Marion Jones passed her competition at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, bite your tongue! Remember that a resume is (if candidates do it right) a strategically crafted piece of paper. You can never really be sure that what you’re reading on paper is in line with the reality of the person. Furthermore, can you really know what it’s like to work with a person based on the well-rehearsed answers they gave to your well-rehearsed questions? No.

So, go back into the trashcan and dig out that stack of not-so-great resumes. They might warrant a closer look, and here’s why:An article in Restaurant Hospitality Magazine (“Weeding Out the Wackos”) rightly asserts that hiring for personality is way more important to sustained employment than skills-based hiring. “You can train the mechanics of almost any job, but you cannot teach or buy personality”, the article quotes VP of Training at Champps restaurants as saying.  During the interview process “you’re seeing the absolute best this person has to offer.”

Having Straight-A Suzie on your roster is no good if she regularly annoys cubicle-neighbors by correcting their grammar (“It’s ‘for whom’, not ‘for who’), or answers the phone like the chick in Office Space. You may soon find yourself dogged with questions from colleagues about your decision and judgment.

What should you be looking for? David Scott Peters, founder of Smile Button Enterprises, suggests going with Marion Jones-proof interview questions (“Tell me about a time when you bent the rules to get a job done”… “Are you willing to take a drug test today?”) and has broken the interview process down into four critical components to be testing for: Skills, Personality; Professional Motivation; and Cultural Fit.  I’m not suggesting you take your candidate to a bar to see what drunken confessions you’ll get out of him, but do make these other factors as important, if not more important than skills in the hiring process.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: hiring tips, interviewing tips