Human Resource

How many times have we tried so hard to match the skills of a candidate to the demands of the open position that the most important characteristics of a person have been relegated to lesser importance or forgotten entirely?

The key to a person's worth (the "right stuff") is integrity, honesty, intelligence, the ability to communicate, and the ability and willingness to learn. Technical skills are important, but without the key ingredients, the technical skills of the applicant may be irrelevant.

Finding the candidate with the "right stuff" is not an easy task, but then my grandmother, after several years of urging, finally convinced me that anything that is worthwhile is difficult and requires considerable effort.

There are several roads to successful hiring:

1. Personal knowledge of a candidate. The best candidates are usually not hunting for a job. They may be people employed by one of your customers, people in competing companies, people in the same industry but not in the same line of business, or people in other industries who have exhibited the talents necessary for the job. More important, do you or one of your key associates personally know the candidates? If so, you may begin to pursue them, but with a few admonitions.

If the selected candidate works for a customer, it's a good plan to contact the customer and let him know that his employee is a candidate for your position. I once hired one of my best customer's top men, believing that I would lose the customer. I decided it was worth the risk. I did lose the customer, but not forever. The man I hired is now successfully running the business from which I retired. It was well worth it!

People with the "right stuff" are absolutely essential to the future success of your business! A compromise in this area has come back to hurt many businesses: it typically involves terminating the "compromise" and repeating the hiring process. What's worse is that these "compromises" do poor work, cause internal...