In my current role I am recruiting a relatively senior team from scratch, one I will hand over when the permanent occupier of my seat returns. This has made some important changes to my approach and I have found the JI has helped enormously.
I tend to recruit the person rather than the CV, taking a personal view on whether the individual has what is needed to do the role and if I can coach the required performance from them. This of course is easier and more relevant when I, the recruiter, am permanent and will be accountable in 12/18/24 months for the delivery of the person I recruited.
As an interim the team I leave behind is more of a legacy and I need to take extra care to ensure that my colleagues are comfortable with the hires and won't look back and say, "if only he hadn't hired him/her". This creates added caution with marginal candidates missing out on the benefit of the doubt.
In this case I am looking for people who can engage and carry strategic relationships with senior colleagues and for this I turned to the JI.
The concept and indeed the execution was to do a personal first round of interviews looking for the most capable and likely candidates. From this a short list for second interview was drawn up and asked to take the JI assessment. This was something that had been explained at first interview so was not surprise.
Keeping it to second round only reduced the effort (and cost), but also risked the fact that the JI might not yield useful distinguishing information. For the assessment I had already sat down with the consultant and pulled out what I expected to be the key values, behaviours and skills for the role. I also asked, and apparently this was the first time it had been done this way, that the consultant not only feed back and assessment on each candidate to me, but the also gave the individual half an hour of feedback. That way both parties entered the second interview with a sense of what the JI had identified and allowed a more meaningful second round, rather than a repeat of the first that could only focus on the CV.
As the client we received a written assessment on each candidate, identifying relative strengths and weaknesses, and suggested areas for questioning/exploration. I also received a summary of the group that allowed relative positioning.
Interestingly the JI reported each candidate as strong ( good first interviews?), but did show differences with some clear gaps between candidates.
In the second interview, I/we checked to see what the candidates thought of the JI. All were happy with it, if somewhat bemused about how it provided so much insight. That said no-one disagreed with the output/analysis and all thought it worthwhile. While not everything came out in second interviews, subsequent information has further ratified some if the insights.
On reflection the people we have hired were the strongest in the JI. We could argue chicken and egg, but I would saythe JI was a useful aid in an effective process.
As a further plus, even the candidates who were not successful left with a positive impression of the recruitment/interview process and of the company - surely the next best result to finding the right people!
I would certainly use the JI again, using it intelligently in support of our personal judgement and not mechanically as a yes/no filter.
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