The JobSync Blog
Hiring for Intangibles
February 2, 2012
Companies often know the minimum education and experience they want for a job, but sometimes pinning down other intangibles such as candidates’ attitude and composure are not as straightforward.
Several years ago, the Harvard Business Review featured an article on hiring individuals with intangibles. Intangibles are important because they allow a company to distinguish between people who can do a job and people who will excel at a job. To hire someone with the intangibles you want, the article suggests a three-step process: 1) Determine which intangibles you want, 2) Craft targeted interview questions to reveal a candidate’s intangibles, and 3) Distinguish between genuine and fabricated responses.
To determine the intangibles you want, the article cites management consultant Laurence Haughton’s approach, which requires recruiters and hiring managers to ask themselves four questions about a job opening’s demands:
1. How important is creative problem-solving?
2. Is calm in the face of fire a must?
3. How important is learning agility?
4. Is the ability to get work done through influence and persuasion a must? (i.e., in highly collaborative environments)
Once you know what kind of intangibles you want, put together interview questions that will require a candidate to reference past experiences that showcase such intangibles pulling the candidate through a difficult situation (i.e., asking candidates how they responded when they were in over their heads in a particular work situation).
While candidates have become more sophisticated, a savvy interviewer will be able to tell the difference between authentic answers and those that are contrived or geared to what an applicant believes the interviewer wants to hear.
By joining JobSync and filling out a personality assessment, companies are being matched with candidates who have many intangibles that they are looking for. It’s just one more tangible way we are helping employers find the intangible.
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