The critical underlying principle that needs to govern candidate outreach is diversity. Not just cultural diversity in your candidates, but diversity across industries, candidate sources, and candidate experiences. For example, some managerial positions require specific role or industry-related experience. Some managerial positions, however, would be best served with other skills and behaviors listed as higher priorities than direct experience. If, as a hiring manager, you understand these nuances, you can leverage diversity to add great managerial talent. How do firms assess if a potential manager has these qualities? There are many methodologies and techniques — performance evaluations, 360 reviews, traditional interviews and numerous other assessment and profiling tools that provide plenty of guidance and support for this process. Companies must spend the time to find the practices that are best aligned with their strategies, commit to using them, and not underestimate their importance. Obviously, there is no guarantee of a perfect hire every time. But making the investment in proper due diligence will substantially lessen the risk of placing a person into a role that does not suit them. Now that we know the qualities we are looking for in our managers, and our assessment techniques are honed in, we simply go out to the candidate marketplace and choose from an overwhelming number of qualified individuals who possess all five qualities as significant strengths, right? If only, folks, if only. Instead, what we are more likely to encounter are candidates with varying levels of strengths across our chosen leadership qualities. It then becomes incumbent upon the hiring leaders to prioritize and align a candidate’s strengths with the role and the organization’s objectives, while identifying a candidate’s lesser qualities as opportunities for improvement. Of course, this assumes at least a fundamental level of competency paired with a proven aptitude for growth with the lesser strength items...hopefully something the candidate has demonstrated in other areas of his or her career path. This approach allows you to face the reality of finding few “perfect” candidates, but also knowing there is a high probability of adding great managerial strength to your organization.
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