Evaluating a job applicant’s capabilities can help you to find their hidden potential. Here’s how to discover what a candidate can bring to the table, beyond what’s listed on their resume.
Q: I think we might be missing some talented applicants by focusing too much on their experience. If we’re seeking new ideas and problem-solving ability, it would make sense to explore candidates’ capabilities as much as their experience in the interview. What are some good strategies for evaluating capabilities?
A: Hiring used to be simpler. When you had an opening, you hired someone who had the same skills as the person who left. Employees tended to stay with you for as long as you wanted them to—sometimes 10 years or more.
But times have changed. Millennials, for example, stay with an organization for around three years on average, so it’s important to hire people who can add value to your organization quickly and not just fill a role.
This means you need to look beyond what’s on a candidate’s resume to find their hidden potential. The resume lists what they’ve already accomplished, and it may be enough, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you what more they can bring to your organization.
The resume lists what a candidate has already accomplished, and it may be enough, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you what more they can bring to your organization.
Many hiring managers are more comfortable evaluating a person’s concrete experience than looking for harder-to-spot potential. Think of this as a growth opportunity for you as a manager: You can learn the new skill of hiring for capabilities instead of experience alone.
Before you start the hiring process, decide what skills you want in the new hire, and craft appropriate interview questions to explore those areas. If you want your new staffer to be an innovative problem-solver, give applicants an example of a process or task that you want done differently than it’s been done in the past, and ask them how they’d come up with a new approach. If you want them to bring new ideas, share a hypothetical scenario and ask how they’d use their creativity to address it.
You’re not looking for candidates to give away their ideas—rather, you’re trying to gain insight into how they come up with new approaches and solve problems.
As you gain experience in looking for capabilities and not just experience, this will become a regular part of your interview process, and you’ll make better hiring decisions.
