What Bosses Should Look For

Posted on April 09, 2013 by Jessica Austin, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Many of the challenges that we see cross our path at Positive Acorn have to do with creating a positive company culture. Recently we were asked to spearhead a cultural shift in an organization that was struggling. In the past 24 months, this company had seen a huge increase in employee turnover. We knew that there could be many reasons– difficult work or low pay, for instance– but one explanation stood out. They were simply hiring the wrong people. They had a workforce of highly competent individuals, many of whom were negative and had poor communication and self-care habits. Choosing the right person for the right job can be quite a difficult task. Here is what we know: it’s not about hiring the right person for the job anymore.

Companies often make the crucial mistake of using old practices when they should be using best practices. An example of this is that many well established companies are using the same old interview questions that they used ten years ago. The problem with this is that the context of work has changed. We have learned that Generation-X tends to be less loyal to companies than their predecessors. They tend to leave a company if they feel dissatisfied.We also know that members of Generation-Y are looking for meaning as well as a paycheck. Managers looking to employ the younger set need to focus, therefore, on values as well as skills.

Here are a couple of suggestions for hiring;

1) Stop looking for the right person for the job.

I know this doesn’t sound correct, but hear me out. Rather than looking to see if the person could do the job or not try looking the person’s values and character. No doubt that it is important to find someone who is capable of the tasks at hand but what is more important is if the person is right for the organization. Let’s face it- you wouldn’t be interviewing them if they didn’t meet the qualifications of the job in the first place. A great question to ask yourself before hiring someone is “what kind of impact do I want the person in this position to have on our culture?”

There is no need to look for job specific qualifications during the interview process. The primary purpose of a resume is to highlight these. Instead, employers should be asking questions that elicit the individual’s strengths, character, and process by which they solve problems. Ask questions like “How do you feel you still need to develop personally?” or “How do you experiment?” This allows the person to share more deeply about who they are, what their values are, and what they hope to accomplish in this lifetime.
Hiring the right person for the culture is a better indicator of employment satisfaction and longevity than hiring for the job, especially in today’s job market. One of our favorite sayings is; “You can teach skill but you can’t teach character.”