Best Way to Refine Your List of Characteristics Needed in Your Interview Candidates

Let us assume now that you have completed the analysis suggested above and arrived at a list of well-defined charac­teristics you are looking for in candidates for the position. You may have produced an enormously long list of characteristics. For example, in my work with law firms, various firms identified the following characteristics they were looking for in their lawyers:

Obviously, it would be impossible to identify whether a candidate possesses all of these characteristics in an interview. (On the other hand, it would be hard not to get a reading on some of these characteristics during the course of an interview, e.g., articulateness, personableness, maturity, self-confidence.)

One way of trying to get a better handle on the character­istics you are looking for is to group them in a way that makes sense to you. Consider, for example, the following groupings of the characteristics listed above (of course, many of these characteristics could fit into more than one group):

Professional Skills

People Skills

Motivation

It s also important to recognize that since no candidate is likely to possess all of the characteristics you are looking tor, you will need to prioritize those characteristics One sensible way of doing that is to place the characteristics into categories. You might try the following four:

• essential to the job
• important, but not essential
• desirable
• a nice bonus

In determining which category to put characteristics into, you should consider the extent to which a particular charac­teristic can be acquired rather quickly or easily by a candidate once he starts work. Such a characteristic would be placed in a lower category than an equally important characteristic that would be much more difficult for an employee to acquire. This prioritization of characteristics will become important when we talk about how to make decisions.

Recognize that, even as to characteristics you identify as essential to the job, not all those you hire will be equally strong in all those characteristics. Nor should they be. You need balance on your team (as long as each member has a threshold level of competence in essential areas).