Four Keys to Recruiting for Emerging Skills
April 22nd, 2010 by Louis P. Kadetsky, CPC
Most open reqs come with a known benchmark. If you’re interviewing to hire an engineer, a marketing exec or a human resources professional, you know what you’re looking for. Even as times change, the skills and competencies forthese positions evolve and are familiar to hiring managers. And there tends to be a pool of people with the characteristics that resemble the position description. Some positions, however, don’t offer an easy reference point. Today, it’s social media consultants. But we’ve seen it before. In the early 1990s, for example, there were many web-related positions that few understood.
When recruiting for emerging fields, you have to dig deeper into a position’s underlying skills and responsibilities, and the “how” becomes much more important. You can’t throw out certain well-known expressions and expect them to be recognized – or expect them mean to the candidate what they mean to you. It’s a tricky business … but not impossible. To help you out, here are four ways to help you master recruiting for emerging skills and positions.
1. Avoid buzzwords
Let’s focus in on the hot emerging field of today: social media. How would you define social media? Do you think your candidate has the same answer? Or, think about blogging … does it always include getting visitors to leave comments? There is no de facto standard for much of what exists I this space, so language is crucial. Stick to words and phrases that have clear definitions (and have had them for a long time).
2. Dig into the underlying skills
Again in the social media space, instead of asking about things like community development and Twitter savvy, take it a step deeper, to the skills that must be applied to complete standard social media tasks. Ask questions of candidates that will permit you to assess how and how well they communicate, and ask for writing samples. Or, if you’re talking to a designer or application developer, interview him or her the way you would a designer or application developer outside the social media space – and, once you have a rapport established, ease in some social media topics and questions.
3. Pretend you don’t know what you want
Under most circumstances I don’t recommend hypothetical questions (there’s always the risk you’ll hire a hypothetical employee!) But some roles are less defined in this new space. Give the candidate an empty canvas, and ask what he or she would do if your company had no agenda or strategy in place. To being concept closer to reality, ask your candidate to describe a situation they have faced recently and describe what they did in under a similar set of circumstances. This will help you get a sense of the candidate’s knowledge of the entire social media world, not to mention how to apply it would to a company like yours.
4. Use case studies
Instead of asking about specific skills or experiences, test the candidate. Provide a scenario similar to one that he or she will experience on the job, and ask the candidate to describe a situation in their recent work or school history and have them walk you through their solution, including detail about how they overcame obstacles, or problem solved along the way. In addition to learning what the candidate knows, you’ll also get sense of how he or she reasons though problems.
As you recruit for emerging talent (such as social media professionals), work with KGTiger’s BYTE service to understand the requirements on which you should focus, and engage our team to conduct the preliminary structured interviews that will weed out the applicants who aren’t a fit so you can invest your time more effectively. In the end, you and your hiring managers will see ROI uptick dramatically as your efforts yield the candidates most likely to move your company in the right direction.