How Can You Tell What a Candidate is Really Like?

How well do you get to know your candidates during the recruitment and selection process?

It’s fairly straight forward to determine whether they have the aptitude for the job, but how easy is it to find out whether they have the right attitude?

Aptitude and attitude - two words that are almost identical but by changing just one letter they have a very different meaning.

We can certainly decide very quickly if we like someone or not – we all make an initial judgement about someone when we meet them for the first time but how accurate are we?

I wonder how often we have offered the job to the wrong person and let the best candidate go?

In my experience some people are able to temporarily mask certain behaviour traits in order to secure an advantage for themselves.

A few years ago I was running a call centre team and recruited a temp call handler on a 3 month contract. She was very efficient and I came to rely on her more and more. Naturally I wanted to offer her a full time position and was delighted when she accepted.

That was when her natural character emerged. That is not to say she didn’t have a fantastic skill set but what became obvious was that she wasn’t a team player at all. She was of the personality type that was very driven and focussed and determined to get to where she wanted regardless. In fact she went over my head to try and secure a better position for herself.

When I moved on she was given my job and within 6 months they had to move her out because the team didn’t like working for her.

What is the point I’m trying to make here?

She definitely had skills the company needed but not in a team and customer service environment. Everybody adds value to an organisation and the trick is to make sure they are in the right job, not only for their aptitude but more importantly their attitude.

This is where personality profiling is so useful. In my example her report would have told me she wasn’t a team player and I would have had more information available to me to help me make my decision.

Having the right people in the right job is the most productive thing an organisation can do in my opinion.

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Contact Sue Arkle
E: findtherightpeople@outlook.com
W: www.findtherightpeople.co.uk
T: 01425 280535
M: 07918 705251