In the recruiting world, we do things backwards. We screen candidates based on their technical and functional skills, as though technical and functional skills are the most important things to consider when you’re deciding whom to hire.
In our hearts we know how ridiculous it is to write job ads and fill them up with long lists of ultra-specific technical and functional skills. Somebody could walk in the door with every single qualification we’ve listed in a job ad, and they could still be a terrible hire. Someone else who walks in with twenty-five percent of our so-called Essential Requirements could do the job brilliantly.
Why are employers so in love with certifications and picky hiring requirements? It makes no sense. I hired thousands of people by talking with job-seekers and getting to know them.
Too often, we make recruiting much harder than it needs to be.
Somebody who possesses every single qualification listed in your job ad might be the worst person to hire if they only make it into work two or three days out of five. They might be a terrible new hire if they’re mean to their co-workers. If you want to make good hires, you have to get your nose out of the resume, and talk to the person!
Through conversation, a careful listener and thoughtful observer can dig into issues like a job-seeker’s past projects, far beyond the traditional, brainless questions like “How long have you been using Excel?” That question tells you nothing about what someone actually knows about Excel.
One candidate might be a smarter marketer, never having held a job with “Marketing” in its title, than someone else who has spent ten years in the Marketing department. Recruiting is not a clerical word-matching exercise. It is a human exercise!
If you ask someone about their use of a tool like Excel, you have to ask them how they used it and how it worked out when they did. If they didn’t use the exact tool your company uses, it’s not a big deal.
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