What Most Companies Overlook When Evaluating Talent and How to Interview for It

These often-overlooked intangibles during talent evaluation are the most effective way to help ensure you make the right hires.

• Hiring managers often focus too heavily on experience and skillset during interviews, failing to see the bigger picture and hiring the wrong person.
• LLR’s Managing Director of Human Capital shares her advice for addressing the five areas of talent evaluation with helpful questions for each category.
• Great hires are often the result of a strong and consistent talent evaluation process. Scorecards tied to a standardized framework is one way to increase efficiency and reduce bias and guesswork.

Every new hire comes with risk. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that a bad hire can cost up to 30% of that employee’s first-year earnings,¹ and overseeing poorly performing employees can take up as much as 10 hours² of a manager’s 40-hour work week. On the other hand, making the right hire can help to have a positive impact on revenue and turnover rates.

Over the course of my career, I’ve witnessed hiring managers make the wrong hire often by focusing too heavily on experience and skill sets during interviews, failing to see the bigger picture. Sometimes the perfect candidate on paper isn’t the right fit for the job. A wrong hire is not always someone who is unqualified for the job – it can also be someone who is not the right fit for the position.

I work with various portfolio companies to look at hiring through the broader lens of talent evaluation to help ensure that an individual not only has the necessary skills and experience but will likely also be a great fit for the position and the company. Talent evaluation goes beyond the standard job interview to gauge that fit. These often-overlooked intangibles are, in my opinion, the most effective way to help ensure you make the right hires.

Talent evaluation covers five areas: motivation, experience, skills, culture fit and upside in the company.

5 fundamentals of talent evaluation

Talent evaluation covers five areas: motivation, experience, skills, culture fit and what I call “upside in the company” — why this role is the best possible next step in the candidate’s career.

It can be challenging for one interviewer to cover all five in a single conversation, so I try to spread them out, asking two interviewers to address each one. Below I’ll dive into what I look for in each category, along with sample questions that help me to gain insight on the candidate.

1. Motivation

This is the number one category I address when interviewing talent, asking questions like: Why are you interested in the position? and What motivates you to go to work every day? The candidate’s answers reveal vital details about what drives them as a person. That, in turn, will help to provide you with a solid foundation of the overall performance you can expect from them.

2. Experience

There’s no getting around it: Experience matters. Any good hiring manager can get a good sense of a candidate’s background from their resume or LinkedIn, so I see this as an opportunity to add texture and depth to their story. What was your most significant contribution in your last position? or What would you have done differently? These questions can give you a sense of what they were hired to do, whether or not they achieved it, or what they actually accomplished — job titles can be misleading.

I also like to ask candidates about the attributes they seek in a manager. At this point, I normally already know who their manager will be. This helps to ensure they will be a good fit for one another.

3. Skills

I start by asking candidates how their skills align with the position. Then I add: Are there any skills you don’t possess that are in the job description? The goal here is to make sure people have taken the time to read the job description and understand what the role entails.

Another valuable question is: What steps would you take to stay current on a required skill? This provides perspective on the candidate’s interest as well as their learning agility.

4. Culture Fit

Particularly for small companies, cultural fit can be the most important aspect of the hiring process. I ask candidates: What did you like or dislike about your last company culture? or simply: Describe your ideal culture. Based on their answers, I usually know right away whether they will be a good match.

Another option is to ask: How would you create an environment that employees find motivating? I’m frequently surprised by how it’s not just about pay and benefits. Often candidates value the opportunity for remote work or a company’s philanthropic efforts. Taking notice of what’s important to a person is a good indication of how they should align with your company culture.

5. Upside

The final piece of the puzzle is upside in the company. Ideally, you’re looking to fill a position, not just for tomorrow, but also for several years down the road. Asking questions like: How do you define success in your career? and What do you want to accomplish in the next five years? will shed light on how the candidate thinks about the position in the context of their larger career path, and whether or not your company can provide opportunities that will keep them around in the long term.

Scorecards allow you to compare candidates based on a standard framework and determine how each person aligns with the skills and accountabilities required for the position.

Building a strong evaluation process: Consistency is key

Some of our most successful hires have been the result of a strong recruitment and talent evaluation process — and this begins with consistency. It saves your team time, makes it easier to compare and assess candidates, helps ensure fair and unbiased hiring, and takes out much of the guesswork.

One of the best ways to ensure a consistent talent evaluation process is to create a scorecard for each position. I advise our portfolio companies to use a matrix with candidates along the top and your list of criteria down one side so the hiring team can weigh the criteria and score each candidate against it. This allows you to compare candidates based on a standard framework and determine how each person aligns with the skills and accountabilities required for the position.

Lastly, company-to-candidate communication needs to be consistent and timely, especially in a competitive job market. If you are not communicating with your candidates every week, they will likely find someone else who is. If other companies have better processes than you, they are likely to beat you in the race for talent.

Apart from the answers to interview questions, look for how a candidate approaches and manages the entire process for clues about their interest, professionalism and motivation.

Heeding warning signs: Candidate red flags

Every interaction matters in talent evaluation. Apart from the answers to interview questions, look for how a candidate approaches and manages the entire process for clues about their interest, professionalism and motivation.

Long delays in communication and/or setting up interviews, not returning calls, last-minute cancellations or showing up late are red flags. This behavior immediately lets me know that a candidate isn’t really interested in the job — and if they are, they lack the professional aptitude to demonstrate it.

Another red flag is too much of a focus on benefits and compensation. Even worse, I am immediately turned off when an interviewee hasn’t researched the company, the interviewer or the job. When a candidate starts asking basic questions about the requirements of a role, I turn it around and ask them what they took from the job description.

Finally, I don’t like to hear too much negative talk or feedback about the candidate’s current company. It makes me think they’re running from something. If so, what are they running to?

Here’s the bottom line.

Talent evaluation is more than a job interview – it is a conversation about the next step in a person’s career that will help to determine whether they will be a good fit once they are in the position. Assessing often overlooked intangibles as well as incorporating a broader range of factors can help to ensure you make the right hire. A consistent approach to the talent evaluation process will help save your team time, as well as make it easier to compare and assess candidates, hoping to ensure fair and unbiased hiring that takes out much of the guesswork.

For next steps on what to do once you make the right hire, read this GrowthBit: Employee Onboarding Checklist to Help Drive Retention and Revenue

This GrowthBit is featured in LLR’s 2024 Growth Guide, along with other exclusive insights from our portfolio company leaders and Value Creation Team. Download the eBook here.