Should you hire a non-ideal candidate or not?

There is a serious shortage of staff. That is no longer news, but has been a hard fact for a while. In the event of scarcity, all kinds of principles soon begin to shift. Necessarily, so is the apology. But with the adoption of 'two arms and two legs', the question remains whether you solve problems with this, or just bring more problems into your home. It will therefore be extra important to keep the basic criteria in mind in your hiring policy. If you cannot set all the requirements that you would wish for a candidate, which ones should certainly be guaranteed?

The 4 most important qualities in a candidate

In addition to traditional recommendations, hard practice and research has taught us that the following four traits have the greatest impact on teams. In this blog you can read what you should pay attention to and how you can support your current employees while you have a shortage of personnel. But also what you can do structurally so that you don't always have to fish in an empty pond.

Reliability

Over the past two years, many employees have made flexibility a priority. Despite the fact that widespread home working has been largely successful, many managers confuse flexibility with reliability.

Flexibility (eg having to work three days in the office and two days at home, having every Friday off, etc.) is predictable and thus easier to manage than unreliability. During the hiring process, applicants will often make flexibility-related requests, but of course, they are unlikely to reveal their reliability issues unsolicited. Therefore, first improve your skills in the field of reference checking to exclude unreliable employees according to that check.

Second, it's important to revisit your interview questions to include behavioral questions that can provide clues. For example: “Tell me about a time when you were faced with unexpected events and how did you deal with them.” In short: ask questions about practical situations and ask the candidate to explain how he behaves and acts.

We all face unexpected situations. And quite frankly, in general, flexible and resilient employees are more reliable. Therefore, ask the candidate how his flexibility and resilience works in practice. Ask about situations that indicate that the candidate has these attitudes.

working ability

The ability to reliably perform tasks at a minimum competency level is an important requirement when hiring a new employee. If your employees are overworked, some help may be better than no help. But keep in mind that the new employee requires minimal training and an induction period. Keep in mind that spending time and energy helping newbies and fixing their mistakes takes a lot of time and a lot of money.

In addition to the job-specific skills, look for candidates with a development mindset. People with this mindset know and recognize that knowledge and skills cannot be developed without effort. You can assess this, for example, on the basis of survey items or interview questions. For example: “Describe a situation where you were not performing well. If you faced that situation again tomorrow, what would you do differently?”

Positive attitude

Like germs, emotions are contagious. One negative employee can “infect” others, bringing the entire team down and adding to the already challenging workload.

Many employees even go as far as to actually change their workflow to avoid someone they don't like. Which entails all kinds of extra coordination costs, less back-up behavior and undesirable behaviour. Suddenly your employees who like to sit on committees, who kept the canteen tidy, are too busy and they hide from this. Negativism from one employee can tear a very high-functioning team apart.

Good communication

Being able to communicate well with colleagues is important in any work environment. But also when working with virtual teams, good communication and trust are needed to block a negative team member. Because the separation between team members makes it easier to “hide” and harder to “look up”. It's much easier to ignore an email than someone standing at your office door. For projects that require professional collaboration, a surly, cynical, or nagging person can derail the entire team.

Managers should therefore assess basic communication skills during an interview. They may also consider asking the candidate about their preferred communication medium and favorite tips/tricks for being an effective communicator.Find out how 360 degree feedback software works.

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