Hire better candidates: A General Contractor's guide to better interviews.
In his famous book, Jim Collins explained the idea that for any organization to thrive, you must have the right people in the right seats.
But as a General Contractor, how do you know if you've got it right?
As a recruiter, I’ve seen how many contractors have questions about their personnel but don’t know how to determine if they are making a good decision. And when contractors have looming deadlines for projects that require specific skill and experience but also want to grow their organization, build a strong team, and prepare for the future, I've observed how many contractors don't feel confident in making hiring decisions.
Questions arise from, “Did this superintendent actually do this project.”
Can our project manager handle this client?
Who is the best Project engineer to work on this team?
So how can you interview project managers, superintenents, project engineers to determine if they’re right for your project or your company?
In Gino Wickams’ book “Traction, He presents a straightforward and easy way, of organizations an identifying a "right people in the right seat" I found in Gino Wickam's book "Traction".
Here's how he explains it:
The baseline: identify the Right People in the right seats:
"The Right people are the ones who share your company's core values, fit into your culture, who your people enjoy being around, and make your organization better."
Or Right people, right seat = Match of Core values+ Unique Ability (skills)
Find the gaps:
People fall out of line by being "Right people, Wrong seat" in two ways,
1. Right person, wrong seat - when they share your core values but are not operating in their unique value wheelhouse either because they've outgrown the role or do not possess the required skills yet.
OR
2. Wrong Person, right seat- when someone's unique skill sets match the role or project at hand, but their values do not match the organization.
I see contractors struggling to make these "right people, right seats" decisions daily, like when a current team member has the skills but is not engaged in the company culture or when a candidate is a cultural fit but not ready to advance,
So, What can a contractor do?
Wickam suggests that in a contractor's core values - that they adopt a scoring system to establish a baseline threshold of scoring Core values and skills one a + or - scale.
+ reflects an individual exemplifies target action
+/- reflects an individual sometimes exemplifies target action
- reflects the individual doesn't exemplify the target action
In this way, Orient your interview to find the information you need to make informed decisions about the Core Values and “Unique Ability” required to do the job. Following these steps should allow more clarity and confidence determining if a candidate or current employee is right for the job.
