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“What to look for when hiring”

This guy, Bob Nelson, contributed a column to the business journal, and I guess he’s credible since he wrote “Management for Dummies” and “1001 Ways to Reward Employees”, and he is the president of Nelson Motivation Inc. out of San Diego (insert Anchorman quote here).

Let me share his ideas for what hiring managers should be looking for when hiring:
He says that you should hire candidates that are:

  • Hard working - “Hard work can often overcome a lack of experience or training…Conversely, no amount of skill can make up for a lack of initiative or work ethic.”
  • Good attitude - “…a friendly, willing-to-help perspective makes life at work much more enjoyable”
  • Experience - [um…isn’t this conflicting with the hard-working part?]
  • Smart - “Smart people can often find better and quicker solutions to the problems that confront them. In the business world, work smarts are more important than book smarts.”
  • Responsible - “…Little things, like arriving for the interview on time and dressing neatly, can also be key indicators of your candidate’s sense of responsibility.”

    • I just feel like this is such a crap response. Maybe it’s because I’m admittedly a very grey-area person, very subjective, and see that most situations are unique and deserve a perspective and context of their own. This goes for people and positions–they each deserve their own consideration. But Mr. Nelson’s suggestion to hire “smart, hard-working, and responsible” candidates seems to be nearly unattainable.

    First, who decides what is smart and what isn’t? How to you quantify it and compare one candidate to another? IQ tests? For book smarts, which he says are less important than work smarts. I think a good interviewer should be able to get to the real heart of these matters.

    It’s not about having someone say “hire someone responsible and with a good attitude.” Who in their right mind wouldn’t? It’s a matter of figuring out how to interview, to get to the real information about behavior and personality. That might have been a more helpful article, Mr. Nelson.

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    This entry was posted on Friday, June 8th, 2007 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Interviews, FYI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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