Your IT Staff - Hiring for ability

AT the end of 2008 a friend of mine joined an iconic, top-end-of-town organisation.  The organisation was being lauded in the press for meeting the severe economic challenges associated with the early days of the GFC by restructuring its many departments and cutting a large number of staff.   Only key positions were being recruited to — and my friend accepted one of these.  

What she found when she entered this organisation was that a restructure had indeed been swiftly implemented, and staff numbers significantly reduced.  However the work agenda had not been commensurately reduced, and the ways work was performed had not been redesigned.  The remaining staff worked absurdly long hours and morale was low.  Many employees were hunkering down waiting for the economic crisis to abate and job opportunities in the wider market to emerge.

This not-uncommon strategy for responding to the GFC, coupled with the fact that quarterly employment surveys are now reporting the second consecutive lift in advertised job vacancies, leads to a rapidly growing anticipation that it won’t be long before discussions about “the war for talent”, “the impact of the aging workforce” and “how to minimise the turnover of your Gen Y workforce” will start to once again appear in business publications.

It is widely acknowledged that Australia has fared better than most countries in the GFC.  Despite this, many Gartner Executive Program members have reported a wait-and-see approach to IT investment.  Many significant IT projects were placed on hold at the end of 2008.  Now, as the economy improves, the expectation is that stalled IT investment will be restarted — and with this increased investment will come the need to hire new staff.  In the rush to bring on staff in an increasingly competitive hiring environment, it is worth keeping in mind some good practice recruitment principles.  A sensible and well-structured approach at the outset can avoid considerable cost and disruption, both personal and organisational, at a later stage.

When recruiting IT staff, technical skills do obviously determine which job applicants will qualify for interview.  However, I encourage you to place equal emphasis on the wider range of capabilities, beyond just technical, that will lead to successful hiring.  

Capabilities is the term used to define what is required to do a good job — or a superior job — in a specific role.  Capabilities are not just the skills required to do the job — but the combination of skills, experiences and behaviours that drive success.  Ensuring the right capabilities are defined for a role — and then recruiting against those capabilities maximises your opportunity to recruit the right person to the right role.  Skills can be taught, but capabilities are harder to identify and develop.

Consider the following capabilities that you have decided are essential for the job to which you are recruiting:  customer service, innovation, team-building and business knowledge.  What is the best way, in an interview situation, to determine the extent to which your candidate has the capabilities you seek?

Experts in recruitment have defined a very effective approach called “behavioural interviewing” or “targeted selection”.  This approach has been developed based on the fact that past behaviour is the best predictor of future performance.  Take the capability of customer service.  No real insights will be derived from asking your candidate their view on the importance of customer service.  A motherhood discussion about the nature of the relationship between IT and the business being essential to successful outcomes will ensue.  Nothing about this conversation will demonstrate whether or not your candidate will actually be able to establish and drive good customer service practices. 

Compare this approach with asking your candidate to “Tell me about a time you had to manage the expectations of an important customer when IT would not be able to deliver their requirements on time”.  The candidate’s response will reveal whether or not they have had the types of experiences that lead to the development of the skills and behaviours you seek.  

I recall a time when interviewing for a team leader role, I asked a candidate to respond to this targeted selection question:  “Give me an example of a time when you provided feedback and assistance to a direct report about substandard performance.  What did you do?”   The candidate described a quite unprofessional and bullying approach he had applied when giving feedback to an under-performing member of his team.  This description of an actual event was far more instructive regarding the candidate’s capabilities and fit for the job than an academic discussion about performance management.

I recommend targeted selection as an approach to significantly improve your chances of employing the right person for the right role within your IT organisation.  There are aspects of this approach which need to be fully understood, well designed and practised to get the excellent results it can deliver.  I encourage you to seek guidance from your HR department, or the many text books outlining capability frameworks and fully describing the targeted selection theory.  

Good luck with the anticipated upswing in the economy — and, importantly, good hiring decisions!

(Linda Price is group vice-president of executive programs, Gartner. The ideas and views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of CyberMedia)