An interview is the candidate on his best day, talking to a buyer who badly wants to buy.
That's not a knock on the candidate. He's supposed to show up at his best. And it's not a knock on you, either. It's just what that situation does to anybody who needs the seat filled. By the time you're ready to make an offer, you might be the worst-positioned person in your whole company to judge him.
Fair warning before we get going. I'm going to walk through three things today, and we sell all three of them. I'm telling you that now so you don't spend the next ten minutes waiting for the catch. You can do every one of these without us, and I'm going to tell you how. At the end I'll tell you how we can help.
Peace of mind on a hire.
Think about where you are by the time you get to the offer. That seat has been open for weeks, maybe months. If you own a smaller company, you might be the one who's been back out on a crew, or running the route, or writing estimates at nine o'clock at night. If you run a branch, your account managers have been splitting a book of business that isn't theirs, and they've let you know about it. If you're an operations director or a hiring manager at a bigger company, somebody above you asks about this opening every Monday morning.
Different chairs, same pressure.
And then somebody good walks in. He's sharp. He's likable. He says the right things. Before the interview's even over you've got him in the seat in your head, and you've already picked out which problems he's going to take off your plate.
So you walk out of that interview feeling great. And it's really easy to call that feeling peace of mind.
It isn't. It's relief. And relief will approve almost anybody.
Real peace of mind comes from somewhere else. It comes from things you know about this person that didn't come from him, and didn't come from how badly you want this search to be over. There are three good places to get that.
One: The Background Check
Start with what you're about to hand this person. A truck with your name on the door. Maybe a trailer behind it, in traffic, in a subdivision full of kids. Gate codes. A customer's backyard while the customer's at work. A company credit card. And if it's a management hire, your people, your numbers, and your client relationships.
A background check answers a simple question. What has actually happened? Criminal record, yes. But in our world the driving record matters just as much, and a lot of companies skip it and let their insurance company find out later.
If you're going to do this on your own, a few things are worth knowing.
Those instant online searches, where you type in a name and get a report a minute later, are not a background check. Most of them say right in their own fine print that you can't use them to make a hiring decision. They pull from databases that are incomplete and often out of date, and they'll happily hand you a record that belongs to a different person with the same name. A real check goes to the source, the actual court records, and confirms it's the right person.
Run the same check on everybody you hire into that role. Not only the ones who give you a funny feeling. It's fair to people, and it keeps you out of trouble.
And there's a federal law that covers this, the Fair Credit Reporting Act. You need the candidate's written permission before you run anything. If you're going to turn somebody down because of what comes back, there's a specific process you have to follow, and it gives him a chance to respond first. A good provider will walk you through all of that. Don't wing it.
One more thing. A record is not an automatic no. What happened, how long ago was it, and what does it have to do with this job? Those are judgment calls, and they're yours to make. What you're buying is the chance to make them with your eyes open, instead of hearing about it from a customer.
Now let's talk cost, because this is the part that surprises people. A real background check costs less than one day of that person's pay. Usually a lot less. Stack that up against everything I just listed that you're about to hand him. I can't think of many things in your business that give you that much for that little.
Here's the honest limit. A background check tells you what's happened. It doesn't tell you what he's like to work with on a Tuesday in July.
Two: the workplace assessment
That Tuesday in July is what the second one is for. A workplace-focused personality assessment.
We mostly use DiSC. It's been around a long time, and we use it for three reasons. We find it accurate. It's easy to understand, so you don't need a psychology degree to read the report. And it's easy to keep using after the person is hired, which I'll come back to.
What it describes is how a person tends to work. How direct he is. How he handles pace, and change, and detail, and conflict. It is not measuring skill. It's not measuring intelligence, or character.
And I want to be really clear about something, because this is where assessments get a bad name. I do not believe in letting any assessment make a hiring decision. Not DiSC, not any of them. Hiring somebody, or passing on somebody, because of what a report said is careless, and it's not what I'm suggesting. It's a tool. It's a resource. It's something to take seriously, right alongside everything else you know about the person.
What it does during hiring is confirm or challenge what you think you saw in the interview.
Here's an example. You're filling a sales seat, or an account manager seat. Maybe it's an outside candidate. Maybe it's your best crew leader and you're thinking about moving him up. The interview went great. Then the assessment comes back and says this person is naturally careful and steady, and likes to have all the facts before he opens his mouth.
Does that mean no? It does not. It means your second interview just got a lot better. Now you know to ask, tell me about the last time you had to call somebody who didn't want to hear from you. How'd it go? How often do you want to do that?
These can also be run specific to the role. There's a report built around sales. There's one for management, one for leadership, and one for the general workplace. So what you're reading is about the job he'll actually be doing for you.
Now here's the part that gets missed. The assessment arguably gets more valuable after the person starts, because now it's a coaching tool. On day one his manager already knows how he likes to get information, what's going to stress him out, and how to give him bad news. If the manager has taken one too, you can put the two side by side and see where they're going to click and where they're going to grind on each other.
A lot of managers take six months to figure that out by trial and error. Sometimes the new hire is gone before they do.
On cost, it's the same story as the background check. Less than a day of that person's pay in most cases, for something you can keep using for as long as he works for you.
Three: an outside perspective
The third one is what makes the first two work.
Because here's what happens. The background check comes back with something on it. The assessment raises a question. And you, with a seat that's been open for weeks and everybody asking when it's getting filled, read it and explain it away. It was a long time ago. He'll grow into it. Relief reads reports too.
You need somebody who doesn't feel the empty seat.
Let me tell you who that isn't. It isn't the operations manager who's been covering the job. It isn't the account managers who've been splitting the book. It probably isn't your spouse, who'd like you home for dinner. These are good people and you should listen to them. But they need this hire almost as badly as you do. They're in the boat with you.
Who is it? A peer who owns a company in another market. A mentor. Somebody from your peer group. A former boss you still trust. Somebody who knows you, knows enough about your business, and loses nothing if you keep looking. Walk them through it. Here's the person, here's what came back, here's what I'm thinking. Then listen for the question you've been avoiding. They'll usually find it in about five minutes.
Ideally, I'd like that person to be us. And I know what a skeptic says to that. Mike, you're the recruiter. You get paid when I say yes. How are you the outside perspective?
Fair question. And for a lot of recruiters, it's a fair hit. A contingent recruiter only gets paid if you hire his candidate, and he's usually racing two or three other firms to get there first. Think about what that does to his advice at the exact moment you're wavering.
That's one of the many reasons we don't do contingent recruiting. Our clients pay a flat fee, either per search or per month. We're not racing anybody, and we don't need you to say yes to this particular person to get paid. It's not a percentage of the salary, either, so we've got no reason to push the pay up. When you stop and think about it, it's kind of crazy how a lot of the recruiting world works. When we're on a search, our job is to get it right. Sometimes getting it right means telling a client, not this one, let's keep going.
We also back a placement with a 90-day replacement guarantee. That's nothing special. Plenty of firms have one. But it does mean a bad yes lands right back on our desk.
How contingent recruiting can hurt candidate experience
Why you're loosing top talent with contingent recruiting
I Challenge You to do This
So here's what I'd challenge you to do. The next time you're at the offer stage and you're feeling great about somebody, ask yourself one question. What do I know about this person that didn't come from him, and didn't come from my gut?
If the answer is nothing, you don't have peace of mind. You have hope. And hope is not a hiring process.
Now, here's where we come in.
We do all three of these. Real background checks. DiSC assessments built around the role you're filling, with somebody to walk you through what the report is telling you. And that outside set of eyes before you make the offer.
And you don't need to have us running your search to use any of it. If you found the candidate yourself, through a referral, an ad, your brother-in-law, wherever, we can still run the check, run the assessment, and be the person who doesn't feel the empty seat. Reach out. We'd love the opportunity to help.
No organization can grow faster than its ability to recruit and retain enough of the right people. Being as sure as you can be about the ones you bring in is a big part of that.
Until next time, keep building your stronger team!