You can often look at a CV and get a feel for a candidate’s abilities and competencies. However, when building your team and looking for your next incredible hire, there is so much more to consider than just skills matching.
Personality
During a recruitment process, you often get a surface-level picture of someone’s personality. But when the pressure is on, what are they really like? If they are very spontaneous, how would they work in a methodical team? Importantly, diversity is a hallmark of a high-performing team, so hiring diverse personalities is not something to shy away from but understanding your potential new hire at a deeper personality level can be crucial to developing a successful working relationship. How could you adjust your recruitment process to see beneath the surface level?
Motivators
Motivators can be split into two, extrinsic, related to the physical job itself, (salary, benefits, work schedules, and the work environment) and Intrinsic, e.g. the amount of autonomy you have within your role, the level of interaction you have with your colleagues or your role’s level of intensity.
The weight of importance of intrinsic and extrinsic factors are different for everyone. Someone may place more emphasis on being able to work autonomously than their salary, being willing to sacrifice their compensation in return for more control over their work. The closer your organisation’s culture and work environment match a candidate's motivators, the more likely they will accept and remain in the role.
Values
While team members might differ in personality, approach, or background, a foundation of common values (kindness, capital, justice etc.) can foster mutual understanding and collaboration. While achieving complete value alignment is not always possible or required, e.g. a charity that hires a salesperson may introduce a capital-driven perspective to a justice-motivated team, hiring individuals aligned with your company's values can increase the likelihood of shared goals and common purpose.
Cognitive Diversity
Cognitive diversity refers to the range of different ways people think, perceive, and approach problems based on their experiences, knowledge, and backgrounds. Diversity of thought can improve your team’s group intelligence, often referred to as the "wisdom of crowds.” This is the idea that large groups of people can make better decisions or predictions than even the smartest individual within the group. When diverse opinions are aggregated, errors or biases tend to cancel each other out, leading to more accurate outcomes. So when hiring, consider how you can increase cognitive diversity within your organisation and improve your ‘wisdom of crowds’.
At Sarah West Recruitment, we recognise that the ideal hire goes beyond skills and experience. That is why we take the time to understand each candidate’s personality, values and motivators, and leverage our industry expertise, to support you to tailor a recruitment process that maximises insights and results.
Speak with us today.