Paul Bunda coaches talent advisors on helping hiring managers define what they actually need before recruiting. He breaks down what gets fuzzy: what "smart" means, which company values matter in interviews, skills versus trainability, and whether you'd hire someone brilliant but difficult.
Chapters
Here are some areas you might want to explore with your hiring manager early on in the process, especially if you want to play a real leadership role in coaching and helping them drive alignment. First, we have to make sure that the hiring manager can articulate what good looks like to the interviewers and then help the interviewers get on the same page. I've had many hiring managers say to me, I want someone really smart. Well, what exactly does that mean? What does smart mean? Does that mean academic smart with great marks from a great school? Does it mean high iq? Does it mean you're good at memorizing and then quickly recalling details? Is it someone who's a strong problem solver? Is it about street smart or savvy? If we don't know, we'd better clarify that definition quickly. Second, the notion of culture is a big one for many companies. We actually do a ton of consulting around helping organizations identify and and articulate the characteristics of their top performers, all so they have better success evaluating those characteristics in their candidates. Even companies that have really strong values and have put a lot of effort into defining these characteristics have not necessarily put them into an interviewing context. Third, we have skills and knowledge. We need clarity on what's trainable and what's not. Clarity in what's a requirement and and what's a nice to have. Does this person really need to know the latest version of Excel or could we train them quickly and with relatively little investment? Some managers get really caught up on stuff like that. What about diversity? What do we mean by that? Does pedigree like where you went to school or the companies you've worked for previously matter next? One of the areas that I like to address early with my hiring manager is the genius, jerk or brilliant ass factor. There are some organizations that will say, you know, even if that candidate is brilliant and they're a bit of an ass, I'm okay with that. Other organizations will say no way under any circumstance. Big egos and self serving attitudes are non starters here. No matter how skilled or knowledgeable they are. We just won't hire them here. And the last one is seniority. Thankfully, seniority is viewed very differently by today's savvy hiring managers. Managers today don't just look at years of experience anymore. I'd be willing to bet that someone with five years of experience at your company could very well outperform Someone with 7 years of experience. Years of experience as a proxy for seniority doesn't make much sense. And the same goes for educational level. There are very senior engineers and also very successful salespeople with mentorship ability who also happen to be very young in their career. We must ensure that we clarify what we mean by seniority, because that notion ends up causing many interviewing teams to to stumble when it's time to make a decision on a senior candidate. These are examples of areas in which you can engage, ask questions, and can drive clarity early on with your hiring managers. In fact, I believe it's our role as talent advisors to coach the manager, to help the manager uncover areas where there's misalignment, and to bring clarity on what good looks like.
