Getting a Naked View of Your Candidate

Who are they really?

Remember the last time you were confident about a hire that you made? Firm handshake, knowledgeable, holds meaningful conversation and passionate right from the get go.

6 months in, with little to no results, they start behaving 180-degrees from what you were expecting. Suddenly you feel that you might have better off choosing another candidate.

So, was your evaluation wrong? Not at all.

There are always multiple ways to look at something, especially when it comes to hiring. Everything you do; from personality tests, skills tests, interviews and reference checks, they all contribute something to the full picture. Every one of these tools are good to profile something about the candidate. Now the question is, are you using the right test to shed light on the right places? In this article, I will break things down to make it simple enough for you to get that full picture of your candidate.

What falls where?

What is this table? I know myself the best, or do I? We all have access to different information. For every action that someone takes, it incorporates a lot of thoughts, which are not accessible by others, and at the same time, what the others are feeling is often not accessible to the person. Now, does having more access mean a better depiction about the candidate? Not necessarily. Overfitting could also lead to clouded judgement. Which begs the question, which aspects are best judged by self and which are best judged by the others?

Research by UC Davis showed that for traits with low observability and evaluativeness, Self is the best predictor. This means we need to rely on the thoughts, intention and the mental state of the person to come up with a decision. This trait includes things like their motivation and conscientiousness. Intrinsic values such as these are extremely hard for others to judge.

Now, when it comes to traits that is low in observability and high in evaluativeness, there is no other better person to tell you more about these other than someone who has worked a long time with the person. I am not talking about 1 week long, I am talking about at least 6-months to 3-years working relationship. But this gets more complex, because different people in workplace also have a better access to certain traits, for example my team mates would know better of my ability to empathize, a trait rarely to be known to the CEO of the company who doesn’t work directly with me.

Interested to know more?

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