A while back, I interviewed a lady that I thought would make a great recruiter. She was high energy, great on the phone, could source, and had an HR degree.
She applied for the job we had open for a recruiter, and I’m 100 percent positive she would have accepted the position if I would have offered it.
I didn’t. She wasn’t a “fit.” The job she truly wanted, her “dream” job, was in straight HR, not recruiting. She was willing to recruit, but she really didn’t want to recruit.
The many components of job fit
We walked away from a terrific candidate, because poor job fit is the No. 1 reason most people fail at a job.
Organizations spend so much time and resources ensuring they’re hiring the right skills, but most totally fail when it comes to the organization and job fit.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s not easy to determine organizational fit. Sure you can design an assessment, do peer interviewing, etc. But it always seems like a moving target, and it is. Job fit also has multiple components:
- The job you have open.
- The company culture.
- The job the candidate actually wants to do.
- The job the candidate is willing to do and how good of an actor they are to prove to you that it is the real job they want.
- Your inability to see that your perception of the candidate, and their perception of themselves, do not align.
Is the job you have the one the candidate really wants?
How many of you have “Poor Job Fit” listed as a reason for termination on your exit interview form? My guess is almost none.
Most managers and HR pros will list things like performance, personality conflict, attitude, low skill set, personal reasons, schedule, etc. We don’t want to use something like “Poor Job Fit” because what that says is “We suck at our jobs!”
The reality is, probably 75 percent of your terminations are because of poor job fit. You hired someone with the skills you wanted, but the job you have doesn’t use or need most of those skills.
The job you have doesn’t meet the expectation you sold to the candidate. The job you have isn’t really the job the person wants.
Most organizations would be farther off to hire by fit than by skills. True statement, but HR pros hate to hear that because it discounts a lot of what we do.
Job fit is the key to retention, not skills. Find someone who wants to be a recruiter and they probably will be a decent recruiter. Find someone with great skills who doesn’t want to be a recruiter, and they’ll probably be a terrible recruiter.
What you really need to be asking candidates
In almost every occupation where you don’t need professional certifications (such as doctor, lawyer, CPA, etc.) this holds true. I know a great accountant who never went to accounting school, and he’s better than anyone I’ve met who graduated from accounting school. Some of the best teachers never went to college to become a teacher, but they love teaching.
Do one thing for me the next time you interview a candidate for a job – ask them this one question:
“If you could have any job, in any location, what job would you select? Why?”
Their answer doesn’t have to mention the job they’re interviewing for to be the “right” answer. Their answer should be in line with what you’re asking them to do – or you’re going to have a bad fit, and either you will eventually be terminating them or they will eventually be resigning.
This was originally published on Tim Sackett’s blog, The Tim Sackett Project.