In response to a recent post titled “Managing People is the Hardest Part of an Organization“, Bob Ring offered this great insight:
Hiring the best people is a challenge, even when using “tools.” At one company I worked for, HR decided to use pre-employment online testing for all applicants. If the applicant didn’t hit a certain score, they didn’t advance in the selection process. One day, as a gut check, it was suggested that we ask our highest performers to take the pre-employment assessment. None passed.
What an insightful story to make us all be careful about how we filter potential candidates. No doubt some practices for filtering candidates work and shouldn’t be discarded. In fact, in most cases the volume of resumes you receive is so high you have to employ some sort of filter. However, we should regularly question if the practices we’re employing for filtering candidates is filtering out potential high performing employees.
I also love the technique of looking at the high performing employees that are already part of your organization when looking at how you want to find more high performing hires. It’s no wonder that employee referrals is one of the best way to recruit the best talent. The best employees often hang around other high quality people.
We all know that getting the right people on the bus is essential to the success of a business. Be careful not to filter potential candidates that could be your very best employees.
