{"id":595,"date":"2013-06-13T16:34:34","date_gmt":"2013-06-13T15:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carolinegourlay.wordpress.com\/?p=42"},"modified":"2020-08-28T15:33:19","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T15:33:19","slug":"how-do-you-know-if-someone-is-up-to-the-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carolinegourlay.co.uk\/how-do-you-know-if-someone-is-up-to-the-job\/","title":{"rendered":"How do you know if someone is up to the job?"},"content":{"rendered":"
You\u2019ve got a vacancy for senior position. It\u2019s critical you get the right person. You\u2019ve got a range of qualified, experienced candidates to choose from. How do you know which ones are up to the job?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t mean here \u2018Will they take on the responsibility?\u2019 or \u2018Can they handle the pressure?\u2019. These are important factors and will be the subject of a future blog post. But much more fundamental than that is the question \u2018Do they understand what they\u2019re doing?\u2019.<\/p>\n
Dealing with complex issues<\/strong><\/p>\n The more senior you are in an organisation, the more complex the issues you\u2019re faced with. In purely operational roles, you generally know what you\u2019re supposed to do and how you are supposed to do it \u2013 you serve customers, operate machinery, prepare food, drive a truck or answer call centre queries. You may have to deal with difficult people, but otherwise there tend to be few decisions to make and clear processes to follow.<\/p>\n Compare this with jobs at the top of large organisations. Here the issues are multi-faceted and the information you have to work with is complex, ambiguous and often incomplete or contradictory. Imagine, for example, that you run a large contract cleaning business in the South East of England, where your primary customers are businesses in office blocks. You want to grow the business.<\/p>\n <\/a>Do you look for new customers or buy a rival cleaning company and acquire theirs? Do you tender for contracts to clean offices in another part of the country or stay in the South East but move into cleaning schools or hospitals? Or do you broaden out to offer other services, such as security, grounds maintenance and catering, and become a facilities management company?<\/p>\n No right answers<\/strong><\/p>\n There are no \u2018right\u2019 answers to questions such as these. In fact, you even have to work the questions out for yourself. It\u2019s a matter of judgement and it may be years before you know whether you made a good decision.<\/p>\n Some people are better equipped to make these decisions than others. Clearly experience helps. It\u2019s useful to know something about the contract cleaning market in order to make decisions about it. But experience alone is not enough and, in some cases, can even be a hindrance. Some people get too bogged down in the detail of their industry or their technical area to be able to see the big picture.<\/p>\n Working without structure<\/strong><\/p>\n The vital factor is the ability to sort through masses of information, identify the critical issues and do this without guidelines. Not everyone can do this. It\u2019s hardly a great psychological insight to say that some people are smarter than others, but this is a particular way of thinking about intelligence \u2013 the ability to guide your own thinking to make sense of complex information.<\/p>\n And this brings us back to your group of experienced, well-qualified candidates for your senior appointment. The chances are some of them will be able to think in this way and some won\u2019t. <\/a>There are plenty of capable people who struggle to make sound decisions when faced with ambiguous information in an unstructured environment, particularly if it\u2019s unfamiliar. They may not be who you\u2019d expect. They could be graduates. They might be engineers, accountants, lawyers, technical specialists or experienced operators who know their industry inside out. They may have impressive track records in their field. But put them in a situation where they have to work things out from a \u2018blank sheet\u2019 and can\u2019t rely solely on their past experience and they are likely to be less effective. Even more worryingly, they probably won\u2019t realise it is happening. They may make assumptions, jump to conclusions or focus on the wrong information, but have no idea they are doing it. People cannot see what they cannot see. They may be very confident in their decision making, but that doesn\u2019t mean they always make good decisions.<\/p>\n Identifying people who can handle<\/strong> complexity <\/strong><\/p>\n So when you\u2019re hiring or promoting people how do you identify the ones who can operate effectively in a vague and fuzzy world? It\u2019s not easy in an interview. A candidate who\u2019s confident and knows their stuff can be impressive, but may still not have what it takes. Traditional reasoning tests (\u2018what\u2019s next in this sequence\u2019 type of thing) are an option but they take a rather one-dimensional view of ability.<\/p>\n