Finding the best employees takes top flight marketing to appeal to the most candidates, and then an interview process to bring the right people forward. Job boards like Indeed are making advertising your job easier than ever, but accessing candidates is still the weak link.
The answer lies in the same principals in quantum mechanics. Quantum theory states that all things exist in more than one state and only become one definitive state once measured. You can perform an easy example right at your desk. Take a coin, spin it on a table, and then cover it with your hand stopping it. While the coin is spinning is it heads or tails? Quantum theory says that it is both in those moments, and doesn’t become one or the other until we choose to stop the coin and measure it as heads or tails, and it is how we stop the coin that dictates what side the coin ends up.
So how does this relate to selecting the best candidates? Much like the example of the coin, our interview (method of measuring) dictates whether we access a candidate as a good or bad fit for our company.
When a prospective employee comes to your company for an interview there are many factors that can make them either a positive or negative possibility for your team. Some of the most important are:
- Friendliness of their initial greeting. When a person enters your store for an interview and they are not treated like someone the dealership is happy to meet it can completely change their energy level for the interview. A negative initial impression from a company can turn a person that would normally be considered a top candidate into a missed opportunity.
- Time for a candidate to wait for an appointment. Applicants coming for an interview are told to be on time and prepared. They hold the business to the same standard. Many interviewers tell us they refused to interview a candidate who was late, stating that it showed they weren’t dependable. The same view is held by interviewees. When they made to wait an hour after their appointment time the desire to win the job is gone, the company is viewed as unreliable and uncaring about new employees.
- Preparedness of the interviewer. The number one way we know someone is listening to what we have to say, in a business setting, is for them to write it down. Prospective employees want to know that the interviewer cares about the answers they are giving. It is deflating for a person in an interview when they feel the dealership employee isn’t attentive to the answers to the questions being asked.
- Asking of concise questions. Many managers try to use a sight test on prospective new hires, “I’ll know them when I see them”. Potential employees succeed based on skills like communication, discipline, ability to be outgoing, and empathetic listening. These are measurable with the right questions. Making your interview all about selling you a pen, and what sports teams a candidate means you are measuring the wrong way. This causes you to pick potential employees that are completely wrong for your store, but look right because of how you are measuring them.
The next time your company is lamenting having to terminate an employee, and decide they were a bad hire from the start, ask yourself how did we measure them from the start?