Getting It Right
Hiring the Right People While the Economy Recovers
When the economy recovers, and it will recover, most organizations, both large and small will be in a hiring mode. This is an opportunity to get it right.
In recent article that appeared in The Wall Street Journal some advice for hiring and getting it right was offered by the authors Peter Q. Blair from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard and Shad Ahmed, Chief Partnerships Officer at Opportunity at Work.
They recommend focusing more on “job skills” rather than putting a priority that privileges college degrees. This change, they contend, would increase diversity in the workforce and expand economic opportunity without sacrificing quality.
They support their advice by noting that of the number of U.S. workers over 25 years old, only 40% of Whites and 26% of Blacks have 4-year college degrees. Yet, there are 71 million US workers who have completed their high school diplomas and are skilled through other means that could be tapped.
But to get it right, hiring for skills and experience alone can, of course, be risky. In essence, what hiring managers primarily seek are candidates who can be depended on, who view problems not as obstacles but as challenges, and who collaborate well with other team players. On top of all that, and equally important, they’re looking for candidates who care about the work they perform each day and are interested in the value they can bring to an organization. You may question whether such candidates really exist! . . . . .They do!
They are called “PRO-ACHIEVERS.” You’ll recognize them as the ones who go the extra mile with or without praise or recognition for what they do. They embody personal responsibleness, which, like integrity, is part of the driving force behind their self-imposed standards of behavior. What underlies responsibleness is the self-adopted premise that “I will do whatever I can that is within my control to see something through in order to meet or slightly exceed expectations and add value.”
Couple the tenet of responsibleness with the second attribute found in pro-achievers, an “achieving attitude,” and you have the ideal candidate and soon-to-be-employee you and all others are really looking for.
The GOOD NEWS is that pro-achievers can be identified during the interview process if an employer knows what to look for. So, if you are interested in learning how to sift out such candidates who embody these two attributes, I invite you to read my newest book The Pro-Achievement Principle now available on Amazon. It is a very short book that can be read in the time it takes to fly from Chicago’s O’Hare to New York’s LaGuardia. You and those in HR will be glad you did….because hiring Pro-achievers will get you closer to getting it right this time around!
Lastly, when you purchase this book on Amazon you can count on $1.00 of my royalties going to the Tunnel for Towers Foundation.
