Three Pillars of a Successful Hiring Process

There are three pillars to focus on to build a successful team:

1. skills to do the job,
2. compatibility with the direct line manager, and
3. Values alignment with the organization.

    

These are the three pillars of success in building a strong, high-performing team.

The first one is fundamental to all, and that is the skills required to do the job.

Those are the operational skills to get the job done. Now, everyone understands that, and that is what 95% of the hiring process is driven by. What do we mean by that? It’s about the education, the experience with specific tools and topics, experience within a function and an industry, it’s about the know-how and what is required to operate in the position. Everyone understands this, and that’s what most people look for. That’s important and needed to get things done.

This is the first core element in the three pillars of success. But hiring success doesn’t end here.

If you only focus on skills…

If you only focus on skills, you can have the most skilled employee in the world, but if you don’t have the relationship – the relatedness – then you are not going to work well together. You have no connection. The relationship is going to fall apart. That’s where the second key critical pillar comes in.

The second key pillar is compatibility.

You can be a highly skilled leader, but if you don’t have the traits that resonate with the individuals in your team, you’re not going to be effective. You can forget about motivating someone if they are not intrinsically motivated, just like you can forget about changing someone. So what is compatibility? How can it be measured? How can you assess that in your hiring process?

Now, the problem with assessing compatibility is that most people are far too confident in their ability to read people in the interview process. They are too busy evaluating the skills of the candidate to consider compatibility at a deep level. – Understand that skills are important, but without compatibility, there is little chance of long-term success. Now, while skills and compatibility are essential, there is another third and equally critical pillar that almost no one thinks about.

Compatibility plays a key role in the three pillars of success, helping ensure strong working relationships.

That third pillar is the individual’s values and the alignment with the organization’s values.

We often don’t understand this in business. But if you think about sports, all great sports coaches know that the physical component is just the price of admission. But when it comes to building a winning team, 80% is mindset. As a manager, you can hire the best, most experienced person, but when it comes to long-term business relationships, it all comes down to values. If those values are not congruent, they will ultimately clash, no matter what. After all, the outer world follows the inner world and not the other way around.

This final piece completes the three pillars of success in any effective hiring process.

So, how do you even address values alignment?

There are so many layers we can go into that most people don’t address or are not even aware of. Most people don’t even know what they are, unless you have someone to point out your blind spots. When you see the full picture, that’s when you can address turnover in your business.

How can you include these in your next hiring decision?

We are providing the narrative on this, as well as the platform to assess these three pillars in your hiring process easily. If you want to learn more, contact us. It would be a pleasure for us to help you build and lead a great team.

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