Never Hire on First Meeting

Hiring people is one of the most important tasks that a manager performs yet many hiring managers are easily fooled and make bad hires.  Here is some valuable advice about hiring for key positions from the veteran management guru Brian Tracy.  He calls it his four rules of three.  Say you meet a candidate who makes a strong initial impression – you are tempted to hire them straight away.  Tracy advises:

1.  Interview at least three other people.  This will put your preferred candidate into context by comparing him or her with some strong competitors for the position.

2. Get three other people from your organisation to interview him or her.  These can be from any level in the company.  They will see things in the candidate that you missed.  Their opinions are valuable.

3.  Interview the preferred candidate three times.  You will form a better and deeper understanding of the person.

4. Interview the preferred candidate in three different locations.  People play different roles in different places.

Hiring is too important to be rushed or to be undertaken spontaneously.  Tracy emphasizes this point with two other rules.

a. Never hire on first meeting.

b. Never hire the first and only person you interview.

The future of your organisation is dependent on the people you hire today.  Every hiring decision is crucial.

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This post was previously published on Destination Innovation.

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