If you don’t know what you’re hiring for, you can’t hit the target. It's easy to jump into the selection process armed with either too little information (just the job title) or too much information (like an exhaustive, multi-page job description). We’ve created a process to help you find the balance. Below are the steps we follow at Qualbe to hire employees that are the right fit for the company.

How to Determine Your Hiring Target

Create Your Hiring Target with the End in Mind

To hire well, you must start with a solid understanding of what you want accomplished. This means you have to know what results you are looking for and clearly define them.

What's the Mission?

Identify the overall goal or mission of the role. Keep this statement to 1-3 sentences, and make sure it captures the essence of why this role exists in your company. This statement should also include the overall job description for the position.

Here's an example:

Account managers are the face of Qualbe to our customers. The account manager will create raving fans of Qualbe by:

  • Maintaining relationships with clients
  • Helping clients grow a profitable business
  • Providing fantastic customer support

What are the Results?

Now create a list of the top 6 results required to get the job done at a high level. Even though it’s easier to create a long wish list, be disciplined here and limit yourself to 6 key results. A longer list of goals is unattainable and becomes overwhelming to measure. This may take several days and several people to pull together. Then prioritize the top 6 required skills to do the job well.

Here's an example:

Top 6 High Performance Results for Account Manager:

  1. Maintains a customer churn rate lower than x%
  2. Grows the customer lifetime value by x% through upselling services that improve the client’s business
  3. Accurately assesses the client's needs
  4. Effectively communicates client’s needs to the team
  5. Quickly and effectively resolves client questions, issues or complaints
  6. Facilitates communication between project team and customer in order to consistently meet project completion deadlines

Identify Your Hiring Target’s Performance Markers

Once you’ve identified the most important results needed, you can begin to outline who can do that work. Write out 6 competencies that will be required to pull off those results.

Here's an example:

Top 6 High Performance Competencies for Account Manager

  1. Builds rapport quickly with clients and team
  2. Listens and understands before offering solutions
  3. Accepts and responds professionally to feedback
  4. Driven to produce tangible results for the customer in a timely manner
  5. Persuasive
  6. Strategic

How Knowing Your Hiring Target Enables You to Reach Your Goals

This system ensures that the company gets the best available employee and that the employee finds the best possible organization to utilize their particular skills.

Your goal when you fill a position is always to find a candidate who does a great job with their work and thrives in a good work environment. The more tightly you define your hiring target, the more likely that you will find an employee who is the correct fit.

At Qualbe, this system has worked well. We use it when we’re hiring and interviewing potential employees because if we know what we are looking for, we find it much easier to hit the mark and find a high-performance employee.

Did you know hiring and placing people through trial and error could actually be costing you a lot of money? Your employees’ true strengths don’t have to be a mystery any longer. Test out Talent Insights tools for free today.