How Can You Tell If a Candidate is Going to Be Successful or Not?

Doesn’t every manager wish they had a crystal ball? Not only could you see upcoming technical advances, consumer trends, and tax reforms, but you’d be able to tell which employees were destined to be superstars and which would quit within three months— or worse, stick around as an unhelpful thorn in your team’s side, causing you to miss out on other, more competent potential hires.

While calling Miss Cleo might be tempting, there are better ways to determine whether a candidate is likely to be successful. While there’s no foolproof method other than hindsight, these practices are excellent predictors of future success.

To read the future, look to the past.

Are you treating references as a rubber stamp? It’s time to stop that and make better use of your candidates’ past employers. This is your chance to find out more about the candidate’s strengths and difficulties from a manager’s perspective. Ask about environments in which they struggled and thrived to help determine culture fit. Find out what kind of jobs former managers think the candidate might be perfect for … and which jobs they should never take.

Don’t hesitate to reach out to other people that weren’t explicitly provided as references as well. With the exception of your candidate’s current employer (unless you have their permission), you can reach out to anyone from your candidate’s former workplaces who may have worked with them.

LinkedIn is helpful for this, but simply calling the business and asking for the appropriate department is a valid option too, if an old-school one. They might not agree to answer your questions (some employers are now forbidding references, a business practice that directly harms their employees’ chances of career advancement elsewhere), but you’d be surprised what you can learn from one candid coworker.

Be a smart interviewer.

You usually have a limited amount of time in which to interview your top candidates, so don’t waste them with questions that provide little information. “Where do you see yourself in five years?” “What’s worse, armed robbery or arson?” “How many raisins could fit in a school bus?” All of these questions have one things in common: they’re perfect wastes of time.

What’s better? Looking (again) at what the candidate has done in the past. Behavioral interview questions can be used to determine knowledge, cultural fit, and personality.

• “Tell me about a time when you were asked to complete a task you didn’t know how to do.”
• “Walk me through an ordinary day in your last position.”
• “Tell me about a recent project you were responsible for that involved using Microsoft Dynamics.”
• “Talk about a time you had too much work on your plate.”

Of course, this assumes you know what you’re looking for, so don’t forget to think in advance about the type of employee that would truly be happy in the job.

Assess for overall suitability, not just skill.

Coding tests, writing tests, 10 key tests … these are all excellent forms of assessment, and can help weed out applicants who are unqualified. But quality assessments can also be used to determine whether people will succeed in a given environment.

High-quality job suitability assessments can determine whether someone will function well in a relatively solitary, unsupervised environment, or if they’ll become unhappy unless they’re in a more collaborative space. They can see whether someone will rise to the occasion in a constantly-changing, high-volume position, or if routine is a bedrock of their work routine. With so many factors that make each job unique, assessments can be incredibly helpful in uncovering whether a given candidate is suitable.

You don’t really need that crystal ball.

Yes, you’re bound to find an occasional bad hire, but good hiring practices can turn that 50/50 gamble into something much more close to a sure thing. Pick up a copy of The Benefits of Scientific Hiring to learn more.