“You spend a lot of time, searching for the right candidate, then invest money and time training that candidate to find out that the effort wasn’t worth it.” said one of my clients - a Human Resources Director in a corporate organization in Abu Dhabi.-

Employee retention is a major organizational issue these days especially that career options are abundant and more entrepreneurs are emerging in the Middle East region.

So the question is how do I know that this candidate is the right one for for the job and my organization? and how do I know that this position will be filled by the right person?

Plan for jobs ahead of time: I know this step is a bit hard especially for smaller businesses as they await a new contract or client to start the job hunt. However the downturn of not doing this is urgency; When you have to fill a vacant position you will accept the best available option and end up with a 20% chance of success. On the contrary, when you are at ease in filling a position you will only hire the right person for the job.

When in doubt do not hire, keep looking: Rightly said by Jim Collins in Chapter 3 of his amazing book “Good to Great”.  A company should actually limit its growth based on its ability to attract and hire the right people. You want to be sure and remove any uncertainties, the sooner you can do it the better it will be.

Hire the attitude and train the skill: Imagine if you have a team member, so skilled at the job and so talented in what he/she does, however has a very negative attitude and ruins the work of other people. For this specific reason, chronological and competency based interviews no longer work alone. It is easier to train a person with the right attitude than to change a person’s behavior. However be careful as attitude alone is not a determining factor for all jobs; as for some positions individuals should have a certain level of experience and knowledge to be successful.

The most successful and sustainable hiring decisions come from a Value Alignment; that is ensuring that there are similar/compatible values between the organization and the interviewee.

Camil el Khoury