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Top Tips: How To Choose The Best Candidate
Check out our top tips for helping you to choose the ideal candidates:
As a general rule, the criteria for hiring the ideal candidate can be divided into five categories:
- Skills and abilities: This can include technical skills which are generally quantitative (or measurable) such as engineering skills, computer/coding skills, mathematical abilities etc.
- Knowledge: Specific industry knowledge key to the company/role, or in a related field/industry.
- Experience: Have they previously worked the same role or in the same industry?
- Qualifications: Do they have the required level of education or related experience? Are they up to date with CPD?
- Work related qualities (or soft skills): These include communication and conflict resolution skills, emotional intelligence, problem solving skills; showing initiative, persistence and resilience, creativity, adaptability and reliability. Time management and organisation, leadership skills, teamwork and collaboration, a willingness to learn.
Here are some tips to help you choose the right person for a job:
- Trust your instincts.
- Look at the talent and cultural fit.
- What is their work ethic?
- Give them relevant task/competency-based interview questions.
- And/or behavioural assessments, conduct an aptitude or skills assessment test during the interview process.
- Look past the CV/resume, do they ask great questions? Are they voraciously curious?
- Can they see patterns in disparate information?
- Are they team players and good resource managers?
- Are they enthusiastic about people and relationships?
- Can they admit to mistakes?
- Mindset - is it growth or fixed?
- Focus on the future, is the candidate highly adaptive?
- Take the candidate out of the office, find out about their hobbies and interests, talk about their accomplishments.
- Trust the process.