Psst: The Secret Step To Hiring Success

The secret step to hiring success is the Talent Profile.

Typically when someone starts the hiring process, they have a job description. A job description identifies the roles and responsibilities for each role in an organization. However, what is often overlooked are the characteristics required in someone to actually be able to perform the job at a high level.

When hiring, companies are not looking for mediocre hires – they are looking for talent. One definition of talent is someone who possesses the unusual innate ability to perform job activities. The definition of talent can be subjective. What is important is to define talent in terms of the specific job, the manager, the team, the company, and the industry. This helps reduce the subjective nature of the hiring process. Companies have to know what they want and define it before they start interviewing. This requires taking time to consider what characteristics are required in a talented person to perform a specific job.

We call this the Talent Profile.

It is called a profile because it helps clearly define and document both what an organization wants to have and what they want to avoid in a candidate for the position, and it is used to determine the extent to which a candidate exhibits the various characteristics required in a specific position.

Hiring managers are looking for the most talented candidates, and creating a candidate profile will help them gather information on a candidate during the process to then assess the extent to which they exhibit the characteristics as outlined in the profile. Narrowing down the key characteristics of the person who is going to do the job best is a critical part of the process

In the Talent Profile, hiring managers will look at red flags, which are traits the company wants to avoid in someone they hire for the job. An organization can live with the positive side of a candidate but the bigger question is, can they live with the downside or the red flags they find?

The Talent Profile is composed of the following elements:

When interviewing, hiring managers must remove their rose-colored glasses. If the person doing the hiring is a people person, they will find themselves liking all of the candidates and will want to circumvent the process. Completion of a Talent Profile is the way to remove those rose-colored glasses, ensuring that the hiring manager is able to match information received during the interview to the profile in order to make more grounded assessments about the best candidate for the job.

To discuss your hiring or job search needs, click here to schedule a FREE 30-minute consultation session with the T3 Talent team.