The title of this post caught my eye from US News & World Report. The insightful list made me laugh; I believe I have watched companies make all 10 of these mistakes in the past 12 months. The 10 mistakes are:
- Flakiness.
- Making hiring decisions that aren’t based on the right criteria.
- Not distinguishing between what can be taught and what can’t.
- Not asking the right questions in interviews.
- Letting candidates get away with superficial, stock responses.
- Hiring too quickly.
- …Not moving fast enough.
- Not getting back to candidates.
- Conducting intimidating, high-pressure interviews.
- Not giving an accurate portrayal of the job.
Author Alison Green has this to say about #2
Employers often overvalue particular types of experience to the exclusion of more important things. You can teach someone to use a certain software program, research legislation, or understand your industry. You can’t teach people to be organized or efficient or have a work ethic.
In the sales world we like to call this industry experience and Alison is 100% accurate in that this criteria does not always lead to success.
If years of industry or product experience were a 100% guarantee of success, you would simply put your product experts in sales roles and rake in the revenue. Typically that doesn’t happen. What does happen is that the sale manager looks to hire the competition’s salespeople. The assumption is that since they worked at a competitor they know the product/service, industry, market, etc. and that they have been successful selling it since their resume states it.
The real key is to know what specific abilities are needed in your particular sale. Unfortunately, that typically isn’t limited to just experience. In fact, it is mainly based on skills, aptitudes and motivations. Understanding that fact, you can then build your hiring process around the criteria needed for success in the role. Don’t assume that because they have worked in your industry that they automatically posses the needed skills to succeed.