Hiring Practices via NFL Draft

The NFL yearly draft is getting to be a big production. It is watched by millions of football fans. Many fans are watching to see who their favorite team is going to select. Some fans are watching to see if their college players when and where they will be selected. Many just watch to see what all the hype is about. I watched it for all of the above reasons. Did my favorite team get better? Did some of the college players that I know, get drafted? Of course, the hype around the #1 pick and Johnny Football.

While watching the draft, I started to see hiring practices that hit home for me. The basic questions that I have when hiring a new team member? Will they fit into my team? Will they add something that is missing from my team today? Am I hiring for need or fit or both? Do I hiring from past experience what the perfect person looks like (characteristics, presence, communication skills). There are so much that goes into hiring or drafting your team.

Like the NFL draft, we all have our homework to do.

• Self assessment of our team or organization. What is it that we need to take our organization to the next level. We should have the job description of the role that we are hiring. Revisit it to insure that you have captured everything. Don’t forget to add the missing pieces that are needed.
• Evaluating talent. Unlike the NFL draft, we don’t have film tape or combines that give us a look at the person in action. We don’t get the opportunity to dissect and revisit that film. We have a resume. We have interview opportunities. Unless you are hiring from within, you don’t really have an opportunity to watch them work.
• Interview or getting to know your candidate. This is where we get to get comfortable with a potential candidate. Hiring managers have a short time to assess and determine fit to the opening.
• Checking references. This is your last and only opportunity to see if the candidate will fit. I know from my experience, I have never contacted a reference from the outside directly. This is usually handled by an HR person or an outside source to make sure all is good moving forward. I have called past supervisors when the candidate is an internal candidate.

After all that is done, you are now taking a risk – you will be hiring what you think is the ideal candidate for your opening that with time will make your organization better!

I have had some extremely good hires over my years. I have had my share of bad hires as well. As managers, we have our scorecards of hiring in our mind. We have our history, we can look at the good and bad – this will help us to make a recipe for hiring moving forward. Like the NFL draft, we can always go back and look at our performance on our hiring recipe. How is your recipe doing?