Venture Recruiter

I can tell you’re bluffing.  Good poker players have an ability to “read” other players at the table and get insight into the strength of their hand.  While much of this can be learned, the reality is that some people have a natural ability to read the body language, expressions and patterns of behavior in other people.  They can easily tell when someone is bluffing.  I’ve witnessed the same thing in the recruiting field.

Ever get a bad feeling about a candidate?  You meet someone and there’s just something about them you don’t like.  You have no reason to dislike them, but you have a gut feeling.  Well, gut feelings mean something.  Every time I ignore my bad feeling about a candidate, it comes back to haunt me.  This is the recruiting world’s version of “reading” a player.

There are candidates holding really bad hands who are very good at bluffing.  There are also candidates who do not show a great deal of self confidence even though they are holding a full house.  It is a recruiter’s job to help read those candidates properly.  Sometimes this is easy.  You can tell from a person’s body language when they walk in the room that they are too aggressive for the group or that they are not strong enough to manage difficult employees or they don’t have the killer instinct necessary to survive in a competitive sales group.  Other times it is very difficult to read someone and you have no gut feeling one way or another.

Every company should make an effort to determine who within their organization has a natural ability to read candidates and pick winners and losers.  Those individuals should be involved in the recruiting process and trained to perfect their talent.  Once these poker players better understand what signals are helping to drive their natural instincts, they can also help train others about subtle things to look for in the interview process.

You can identify these good readers by looking at your company’s past hiring history and determining who interviewed the top people at your company and who interviewed the bottom performers.  You may begin to see a pattern of people who recommended hiring the top performers and those that recommended passing on the problem employees.  (You might also identify people who are very poor at judging candidates and consistently recommend hiring the wrong people.  Either remove those people from the selection process or make sure they get adequate training.)

Picking top employees is one of the most difficult parts of recruiting.  This is one approach that might help in the selection process to avoid hiring mistakes.