Making the Right External Hire

Dear Worried Executive:

While the hiring of external candidates is always risky, here is some advice that should increase your odds of success:

1. Sit down as a group (involve all the members of the interview team) and decide what skills and attributes are essential for success in the position. Your interview team should consist of management personnel as well as peers and subordinates to the position that you are looking to fill.
2. Make sure that you develop a well-written description to use in job advertising and also to share with the candidates. This is an important step to attracting the correct external candidates.
3. During the interview process (both phone and in-person), have each individual in your interview team focus on different aspects of the candidates’ background (e.g. technical skills, personality, presentation skills, chemistry, cultural fit, etc.)
4. After each candidate interview, have the interview team meet as a group to go over that candidate. After all the candidates have been interviewed, have the team meet again and rank the candidates.
5. Once you decide on which candidates will be hired, make sure that your company does extensive reference and background checks on each person.

While hiring is not an exact science, following these steps should greatly increase your odds of hiring exceptional external talent.

SOURCE: Mike Sweeny, MAS Recruiting, Cherry Hill, New Jersey