The Impressive Hire — From a Recruiter’s Perspective
The most common question I’ve gotten from junior hires and fresh grads alike, especially during our introductory calls prior to the actual interview is, without doubt, “What are you looking for in making this hire?”
For a long time, this was nestled deep in my intuition. I knew what a great fresh grad looked like, but I lacked the language for it. Digging deep, here’s what I’ve come up with: two highly effectives things you can start with to put your name square at the top of a recruiter’s list, if not for being a good technical fit, then for being a high-potential hire.
The Lowdown on Transferable Skills
There are probably a lot of people who say this, but here’s the reality: work nowadays is mostly cross-functional. You can, in fact, specialize, but this shortchanges you. Transferable skills, therefore, refers to skills that will help you along, regardless of which function/department/role you are in. For example, you could be a great coder, but you know what’s even better? Being a coder that can succinctly communicate ideas in documentation or tutorials for new hires. Or being a finance manager that can create visualize data beautifully in addition to analyzing it, a sales manager that can write scripts to automate his/her follow-ups. It pays off to have these as extra ammunition within your arsenal.
Hard Skills:
- Coding, key concepts & apps (CSS/HTML, NodeJS, Python, etc)
- Business, both techniques & apps (personally prefer Word, Excel/Sheets and Keynote)
- Project management methods & apps (Jira, Pivotal Tracker, Freedcamp, Asana, etc.)
- Design principles & apps (Photoshop, Sketch, Invision, etc.)
- Data analytics & visualization (Tableau, PowerBI, etc.)
- Copywriting, best practices & vocabulary (understanding diction, tone and cadence)
The key here is not to pick up each and every software in depth, but to understand the basic tools, concepts and process that each software invokes. For example, if you can code, you could learn to write scripts for Google Sheets for example, which, as I am learning the hard way, is more valuable than you think it is. If you can visualize data, whether it’s user analytics or employee retention, Tableau or Excel, that skill will pay off well. Understand the concept, not the software.
Soft Skills:
- Negotiation & persuasion/sales skills
- Systems thinking: agile, scrum, kanban, Six Sigma
- Reading body language
- Decision-making frameworks
- Time management/to-do list systems
- Self-management
The aim should be to have found a system that works for you and internalize it by the time you start work. Take self-management — if you already know your most productive hours, you can dispense your workload efficiently and get the most of your own time. If you know systems thinking, chances are, you can dissect and critically think about how to optimize workflows. Needless to say, negotiation is something that happens every day, all the time, even at the lunch table, so how are you going to practice and make full use of that particular skill?
Asking the Right Questions
Many times, the first step to getting anything done well is knowing how to ask for contextual information, or expectations of you. Sometimes, being direct works (asking your recruiter “What’s expected of me in the first 90 days?” is perfectly fine, but asking a client what they expect of you might stump them) but most times, it can be helpful to have a trove of questions in the back of your mind that you can use to dig deeper.
Some questions that I’ve collected and use myself over the years:
- “What’s the KPI that this particular person/practice/project is expected to achieve?”
This question tells you what the other person’s win, what’s important to them, so you can help them achieve it.
- “What would be the wow-factor for this person/practice/project?”
Better than just the wins, also find time to go the extra mile and think about what might impress the other person.
- “What would cause you to reject/disengage with this person/practice/project?”
Determining the minimal level of delivery, the deal-breakers, is also important — make sure you never cross these lines.
Of course, there are other questions that I use such as “If you had a magic wand, what would the ideal state for this person/practice/project be?” but those are not included here because they’re not as generic as the three I’ve used above. I’ve found that the three above are most effective/efficient for determining what you cannot let happen, what you must deliver and what you can deliver above and beyond to make it excellent.
The interesting part comes in where you find these questions. There’s a lot of inspiration to be found in talk shows, like Oprah’s SuperSoul Sunday, and you’ll be able to find more than 200+ questions by Googling “recruiter questions” “questions that venture capitalists ask” “entrepreneur evaluation questions”. I recommend First Round Review as a resource, especially if you’re intending to work for a startup. These questions are good for networking cocktails, client/partner meetings, interviews.. if you use the right questions in the right context, the applications are endless. Again, the idea is to appropriate these questions and adapt them to your own style and your own ends. Know what answer you are looking for use these questions as tools to get those.
One last note: if you’re looking for a job, one of the questions I always dig deep for is the company’s values and adherence to values. For one, if the company has a set of espoused values but no one actually adheres to them, that’s a big red flag to me — it signals a disconnect between leadership and the rest of the team. Get to know their values intimately, evaluate if everyone you encounter displays those values or shows pride in them — cultural fit will enrich your time working for that particular company.
The nature of work in this new economy necessitates that we all become more focused on skills that augment our specializations — and the tactics to getting there are evidently more actionable than just “work on soft skills”. Of course, it takes plenty of deliberate practice to get to a point when they become useful, but these skills give such a huge returns on investment, not to mention they are applicable in most aspects of life, not just at work. Make your investment, and let me know how it goes?
PS: At the time of writing, First Round released this article that I found invaluable, too. Read it, learn it, apply it. :)
