Hiring the wrong person can cost up to 7 times as much as a good hire. but how do you make sure you hire the right person? this newsletter looks at the processes and insights you can use to make the best possible hire. sign up to bizbrain at www.bizbrain.co.za

1. Edition 01. November 2011 www.bizbrain.co.za
Business insights,
succinctly put
Hiring the right people
Building a great company begins by hiring the right people to work for you. All the time and money
you invest in training and incentives for your employees will be for nothing unless you’ve hired
A-players to work for your business in the rst place. Brilliant employees will make your business
shine, but a single bad hire can drag your company down.
Simply scanning the CVs that land on your desk, interviewing candidates and hoping for the best
just isn’t good enough if you are serious about hiring the best talent. There is a science and art to
hiring the best people, and it’s one that you must master to run a successful business,
division or team.
Like so much else in business, hiring is about knowledge and preparation. In this issue of bizbrain, we
hope to o er you a few tips that will help you to hire candidates that are the perfect t with the
needs of your business.
The hiring checklist
1 Create a job speci cation outlining the skills and attributes you need from your new
employee, as well as the tasks that will make up his or her job.
2 Draw up a recruitment plan covering how you will nd your new employee – for example,
whether you will advertise the job, work through a recruitment agency or tap into your
network of contacts.
3
Prepare the list of interview questions and tests you will use to identify the best candidates.
4 Kick o the recruitment process by advertising the job or approaching a recruitment agency.
Look through applicants’ CVs to nd those that are a good potential t with the role you are
5 trying to ll. Feedback to recruitment agencies why CV’s arent good, so they can re ne their
process.
6 Set up interviews with the best candidates.

2. 7 Keep notes about every interview to keep track of the strengths and weaknesses of every
person you see.
8 Create a short list of potential hires and check their references.
9 Call one or two of the best candidates in for a second interview, perhaps with your boss or a
colleague sitting in to get a di erent perspective.
10 Make an o er to your candidate of choice.
Structuring your candidate interviews
Preparation is the key to a successful interview. Before you start interviewing candidates, you should
have a list of general questions that will help you identify the right person for the job. You should
also look at each interviewee’s CV and covering letter before the meeting to prepare relevant
questions. The questions you should prepare can be broken down into three categories:
Biographical questions
You should ask questions about
candidates’ careers to understand whether
they have the experience and attributes you
Behavioural questions
are looking for. Find out what they did at
Identifying the right employee for a job isn’t
each previous job, what they learnt, who
just about quali cations, skills and experience.
they reported to, and why
It is also about how well they will t into your
they left previous
organisation. Behavioural questions help
jobs.
you to understand how a person
interacts with others and whether
Skills-based questions their temperament and personality
The best way to determine whether a ts your organisation’s culture.
candidate has the skills for a job is to give
them some sort of test or assignment. For
example, ask a salesperson to do a quick
improv presentation on your product or get
a programmer to tell you how he or she
might address a particular
technical challenge.

3. Essential reading
The Essential Guide to Recruitment:
How to Conduct Great Interviews and Select the Best Employees
By Margaret Dale
Poor recruitment skills can cost you a great deal of time and money. This practical book aims to
help you master essential recruitment skills and develop an e ective interviewing technique. It
shows you how to conduct interviews that are respectful to your candidates yet allow you to get
the information you need from them to make good decisions. The book o ers readymade
interview questions as well as interview guidelines.
Successful Interviewing and Recruitment
By Rob Yeung
Successful Interviewing and Recruitment aims to show you how to structure an interview,
identify promising candidates, and hire only those who will add value to the business. Based on
proven techniques, it o ers advice on which questions to ask and which not to ask. Some helpful
hints guide you around tricky issues like identifying dishonest candidates and designing
practical tests to measure candidates’ competencies.
Expert Q & A
Tips from Dr Del J Still, author of High Impact Hiring: How to Interview
and Select Outstanding Employees
What type of questions will tell me if a person is detail-oriented?
Have the jobs you held in the past required little attention, moderate attention, or a great deal of
attention to detail?
Do you prefer to work with the "big picture" or the "details" of a situation?
Give me an example of an experience that illustrates your preference.
Tell me about a situation where attention to detail was either important or unimportant in
accomplishing an assigned task.
What type of questions will tell me if a person is self-motivated?
Tell me about a time when you went out of your way to complete an assignment.
Give me an example of a time when a project really excited you.
Describe a time when you were unmotivated to get a job done.

4. I was just hired as a supervisor and will be interviewing soon. How can I come up with the
right questions to ask?
You can start by reviewing (or writing) the job description. Identify the key duties and
responsibilities. Then decide what skills are needed to perform these key duties and responsibilities.
Finally, draft some open ended interview questions that will make it necessary for the candidate to
explain how they have actually applied these skills in the past.
In your book "High Impact Hiring" you recommend using a behaviour based interview. Why?
Behaviour based interviews take advantage of the fact that people are creatures of habit and repeat
patterns of behaviour over and over. So, if we can get job candidates to recall speci c job-related
events, we can use this information to predict how a person will perform in a similar situation in the
future.
SOURCE: AMAZON
Interview questions that put
candidates on the spot
Wild card questions can o er some interesting insights into the way that candidates think,
providing insight into their creativity, problem-solving abilities, interpersonal skills and
level of motivation.
Some examples include:
* Why are manhole covers round? [A good way to gauge creativity]
* What is the last book you read? [Indicates the potential candidate’s interests]
* How would you explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew? [Shows how
well the prospective employee understands a technical subject and his ability to communicate
about his discipline with people who are not specialists in the eld]
* How many petrol stations would you say there are in South Africa? [Gives an idea of reasoning and
problem solving abilities]
* What makes you angry? [Provides insight into temperament and emotional maturity]
* What are the rst three things you'd do on your rst day at work here? [Demonstrates a potential
employee’s work priorities and how he may t in with your culture]
* How would you describe yourself in three words? [Gives an idea of the candidate’s
perception of herself]

5. Putting potential hires to the test
There are many potential tests you could use to judge candidates’ suitability for a role in your
organisation. You should consider working with a professional such as a psychometric expert to
decide which tests to use when recruiting for a speci c position. Some examples include:
Intelligence tests or Personality and Management tests: Job skills tests:
mental ability tests: motivation tests: These are used to Provide an insight
These tests gauge a These measure an understand a into a candidate’s
job candidate's individual's patterns candidates potential job-related
aptitude or ability to of thinking, feeling, to be a successful competency.
quickly acquire job and behaving. They manager.
knowledge and can be useful in
perform job-related assessing a
tasks. candidate's level of
drive and motivation.
Checking out your candidates
Don’t assume that candidates who are perfect on paper and impressive in interviews are all
that they seem to be on the surface. Check out their references to nd out more about who
they are and what they have done. Find out from previous employers what their strengths
and weaknesses are. Do not rely on the recruitment agency to do this job for you.
Some questions you might ask include:
Would you hire this person again? Why or why not?
How often did the candidate receive salary increases?
What were his/her major achievements while working for your rm?
What were the candidate’s main responsibilities?
Did he go above and beyond what was required of him without being asked?
What were the candidate's strengths and weaknesses as an employee?
Was he/she punctual?
Did the candidate get along with other workers?

6. Making the job o er
Your long search is nally drawing to an end. You’re nally ready to ask a promising candidate to
join you. But there is still plenty of admin to do. The rst step is to do all the HR paperwork including a
job o er including salary, bene ts, leave days and other terms and conditions of employment.
Be ready to negotiate with your candidate of choice. You should have found out about the
candidate’s expected salary range during the interviews, but you must have a salary cap in mind
once negotiations begin.
O er some sort of incentive to join and excel, such as a salary review in six months’ time. Also, be
willing to recon rm details of the career path you see for the candidate. When you pick up the phone
to o er the job, tell the candidate about the position you are o ering and when you’d like him to
join.
Explain why you choose her above the other applicants for the job. If the candidate wants time to
think the o er over, end the call by agreeing when and how the prospective employee will contact
you to inform you of the nal decision.
Business insights,
succinctly put
We hope you enjoyed this issue of bizbrain. For more information please visit our website at www.bizbrain.co.za