In over two decades of executive and professional recruiting I have learned some useful techniques for finding the right candidates.

Imagine you are tasked with hiring your next CEO or Executive Director. How do you begin to evaluate candidates past the resume and ultimately find the person who is going to do the job, be loyal, and build a loyalty culture from within? Everyone will say they can, but not everyone will.

My 5 insider steps for hiring the best:

#1. There are at least 5 essential questions you need to ask yourself and the candidate, and when I say need to ask, you need to ask. 1. Can the person do the exact job you are recruiting for and the job of the future? 2. Is the candidate motivated based on resume and in-person interviews? 3. Is this candidate manageable across the existing team you have? 4. Does this person fit your culture? 5. Can this candidate build culture from within?

#2. Have multiple interviews. I always like the process to begin with a skill-based interview that gives me an apples-to-apples comparison. Each candidate gets the same question and is walked through the same process. The benefit of this is to have everyone on the most level playing field possible, so you can assess who is prepared, who has the skill, who shows up under pressure well, and so on. Then you can compare candidates easily. From there you get to fit. Your first interviews can be in your office with their purpose to assess skill. The second interview is meant to dive deeper into the individual and to assess personality and culture fit. Usually two formal interviews are a good start with a third interview meant to relax the candidate and to really get to know them. My personal favorite is to do a casual meeting over lunch or breakfast as it allows the candidate to settle in and allows them to really show their true colors. The order should go: First interviews with your top four or five candidates. Second interview, you have winnowed down to top two candidates. The third interview is for your final candidate, off-site, over lunch just prior to offer. This exercise is very beneficial for the candidate, too. It allows them to meet the team, the managers, and it let’s them put names to faces. It also helps the candidate through the transition of their career and the change process so the employment offer does not get sidetracked due to feelings of fear, hesitancy and buyer’s remorse. Last tip, you should always have a backup candidate in your pocket in case your final candidate allows their fear to get the best of them or doesn’t work out for whatever reason.

#3. Do not always meet at your office. Meet the candidate outside the confines of the expected. When candidates are in your corporate office, or the office of your recruiting partner, people are less likely to be themselves. So, when you interview candidates, meet off-site, make it casual and non-corporate. You will find you see the candidate in a new light when they are outside of the corporate environment where their behaviour will match the surroundings they are in.

#4. Passion isn’t found on paper but it’s passion you must have. All things being equal, skills, experience, salary, I always choose the person with the most passion for the position and their past experience. These are the kinds of people who usually step up, help out, drive performance in positive ways based on their leadership, and can elevate people, teams, and culture. I have had candidates who are passionate and others who show less passion, though they might be technically adept. Passion for work, for career and the people around them are strong signals that should not be ignored. Choose passion.

#5. If they don’t ask good and important questions based on their research of your company, this is a red flag. Yes, you want them to answer your questions completely, succinctly, backed by experience and examples. However, if that candidate asks no questions, few questions, or less than important questions, or shows in other ways they haven’t taken the time to learn about you, then this is a bad sign. Do not overlook it when a candidate doesn’t ask her or his own questions as this is a sign of someone without the curiosity (or the passion) to look into your organization, ask questions, and ask themselves if you are a right fit for them. Imagine if you didn’t ask questions of that candidate? That wouldn’t make any sense and it would leave the candidate wondering. You also need to wonder when they don’t ask questions important to them in return. Hiring the right people is critical to the success of your business. Having to do the process once can be daunting enough. Doing it over and over again can feel like blunt-force trauma to you but the biggest damage is happening to the business, in costs to rehire, retrain, and reintroduce to your customers. The less time you spend finding the right person, the more time you have for growing the business you have.

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There is a spark to people. We’ve all felt it. We know people who have it. Some of us are told by others we have it. Sometimes we call it charisma, presence, or character, a character you can feel. Where does it come from, and why do some people have more of it than others?

In my over 20 years of executive and professional recruiting, I have interviewed and followed up references on thousands of job candidates, exposing me to people from all backgrounds. The candidates I choose to put forward to final interview always have the skill-sets required, but they also have that other thing, character. And it’s something you can feel.

A bigger-than-life personality doesn’t mean the loudest person in the room or the most extroverted. There is such a thing as quiet power in people, too. So-called introverted personalities might display this more than extroverts, but we have all met someone who has a reserve of inner strength that comes through in what they say, how they say it, and how they make you feel being around them. These people are natural leaders, they have “that spark” that attracts others to them.

Everyone I’ve met who has that spark has one thing in common, regardless of differences in backgrounds, experiences, and executive or professional job level: it’s the consistency with which they elevate the people around them, under them, and above them. They are, and always have been, individuals with impeccable integrity, and integrity cannot be faked. Integrity is an energy like all character traits, good or bad. A great book on this subject of emotional resonance is called Power vs Force which shows how power is more powerful than force, it resides within, and power comes through choosing positive resonance, with emotions like empathy resonating at a higher level than, say, fear. Research in Japan with crystal formations reacting to words and music shows that even at the most basic natural level, the universe from which we are made and are a part of, takes us higher when we choose the higher values for ourselves.

When I do reference checks on prospects, I love to hear these magic words: “I’d work for her or him again in a heartbeat, no hesitation.” Now you might argue that everyone tries to give their best reference, they might even coach that reference in advance. Granted. And you’d be right, at least in some cases. Over two decades I have learned to distinguish between the real and the fake. Despite my own intuition and experience, what’s ultimately most interesting to me is this: The candidates I feel have the most to offer an organization are also invariably the candidates my clients also love best. They feel the same energy from candidates, that special quality no one can really put their finger on. They just have it, all things being equal. It never comes down to technical skill. It comes down to being attracted to the inner qualities of that candidate, as those qualities and values can be seen in their actions. These seem to be the candidates who always move ahead.

Leadership comes from within. There is no way around that. Leadership is built over time until it becomes character, the way you are, the way others see you, and probably what makes people say things like “She’s the best manager I ever had”; “He just has a way with people”; “They just have something the others don’t”; “He really cares about his people”. These are just some of the way’s leadership is described back to me by people who have experienced these prospective candidates. They care about the success of everyone around them, because they know their success, their greatness, their strength is measured by how successful they make others. And it shows.

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After seeing, reviewing and interpreting thousands of resumes for my clients over 20 years of executive headhunting, I have a single piece of advice for you looking for work or a new career: It’s up to you to tell your own story in living colour, bringing it to life for a recruiter and potential employer. Otherwise you will end up on the rejection pile.

Your resume is your career story. It’s not just an abbreviation of the facts of your job history with dates. Many resumes I review assume that the reader knows you as well as you know you. Resumes also assume a recruiter or potential employer understands your past job history, your titles and roles, and your significant contribution to an organization. Sadly, many resume writers do not take the time to make their resume their unique calling card, presented in a way that engages and compels. Bulleted lists, job titles with dates, none of this is enough to get you the engagement you’re looking for from potential employers. Here are 4 quick tips to help you craft a vivid resume of truths and facts well told.

4 Tips To A Technicolor Resume And Better Results:

1. You have dreams and goals, so why begin a resume with the flat “I’m looking for a position with a company where my skills can be best put to use”. Wow, that is generic and makes me yawn every time I see that at the beginning of a resume. If your first few words are so dull, why would I keep reading about you? You’re not a dreary person so why speak about yourself in dreary ways? Why not begin by showing your unique abilities and passions in a way that doesn’t sound generic?
2. Don’t make everything about yourself. A potential employer wants to know what you’ve done AND how you can help them if they hire you. Speak to them when you write. How did you help past companies achieve more success with your unique skills? How do your “soft skills” enhance the “hard skills” you and everyone else will have? 
3. Research has shown that stories stick with people 22x more than bulleted lists and other “dry” factual information. You’re a person and your entire life is a story, so why not make a narrative for a potential employer on how your exceptionality will help them be exceptional?
4. Act like you care. I still see many executives who come in with what can only be called a “deserving attitude”. You have to remember, just because you might have had a big job in the past, doesn’t mean you deserve the next one. Show me, show the employer, that you actually care. Submitting your resume only says you want to be considered for the job. Your attitude says more about why you should get the job.
   
   And here’s a bonus tip: If you wouldn’t read a boring book, why would any recruiter want to read a boring resume? Make it worth reading, make it worthy of you, and make your worth stand out. You’ll find your fishing trips much more successful. 

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The Harvard Business Review drew some alarming conclusions in recent research: “Levels of engagement at work are continually low and declining in some parts of the world. Earlier this year, the Guardian reported that Amazon warehouse workers are treated ‘worse than robots’ — running to fill orders and skipping bathroom breaks as they are monitored by electronic urveillance. Evidence of rising work intensification in many countries has been backed up by the media, including stories about the effect…on women, as well as popular books that bemoan demotivating work, and that identify the huge toll stressful work has on communities internationally.”

The lack of engagement and burnout and work dissatisfaction, says HBR, is due to positions and work that are poorly designed. The authors note that “work design refers to the nature and organization of tasks, activities, and responsibilities within a job or work role.” From a human
perspective, when people are given interesting work, the autonomy to manage their own tasks, and a “meaningful degree of social contact with others, and a tolerable level of task demands, reasonable workloads, clear responsibilities, and manageable emotional pressures.”

When the work is designed well, the benefits for employees include job satisfaction, engagement, improved home-work balance, lower job stress, better well-being, and an overall sense of purpose. For companies, the benefits of work well designed means you have a better
opportunity to get the best out of people, rather than getting more out of them. HBR reports that “job autonomy [is] one of the strongest drivers of employee creativity, proactivity, and innovation. But when work is poorly designed, the opposite is true. Jobs can become intolerable and demotivating — particularly jobs in which the tasks are repetitive and tightly controlled, or jobs in which the level of demand overwhelms people.”

In a competitive business environment, you need to decide if you want your business to live or die. To live means to innovate your roles from within, using creative thinking and empathy as drivers of profit, engagement, and efficacy.

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