Selecting staff involves working with the current assigned staff and hiring additional personnel. As a newly assigned manager you inherit a staff. Initially, you need to determine each individual's competencies and determine how those competencies integrate into your department's capabilities. You are now faced with hiring new people. What are the guidelines?

Staffing your department may be quite different from others. Research departments require people that will differ markedly from operations or administrative departments. A department staffed with people involved in routine activities will be quite different from the one focused on innovation. Staffing must be based on needs. I have heard many HR people claim, "we hire only the top 10 percent of the class." That may be a justified goal as long as you need the top ten percent of the class. But hiring the right people depends on more than grade-point average. High grade-point average without drive, energy, and the ability to work with others doesn't make the grade today. There is little demand for secluded specialists or thinkers of great thoughts.

There are differences in recruiting a college graduate with a baccalaureate degree, a graduate with an advanced degree, and an experienced professional. The typical college recruiting program in large organizations involves a call for some number of people in various disciplines. The emphasis is placed on the academic record, any related outside activities, and general screening of personal traits. The HR people and occasionally some discipline-related people make the initial screening at the university campus. They later circulate the applications with their comments within the organization to the hiring managers to determine the level of interest in particular candidates. The managers sign up to interview the candidates of interest, and HR extends the invitation for an interview at some appropriate location. The process concludes with an offer of employment or a rejection and will vary depending on the organization and its relations with the various universities. In smaller organizations the process is less formal and often involves a personal call to a professor with whom the manager may have a business or social relationship.

Hiring people with advanced degrees or experience becomes more personal and is often initiated by the hiring manager. The process involves developing a detailed job description that includes the required educational background, specific disciplinary interest, and a past history of personal contributions at other organizations. The job description focuses on specific questions, such as: What do you want this person to do? What does the work involve? What knowledge, skills, attitudes, personal characteristics, and experiences does the applicant bring to the company?

When there's a position to be filled that has certain very specific requirements, it's not enough to say we need an organic chemist or a computer scientist or a human behavior specialist or a statistician with a Ph.D. or some number of years of experience. When it involves hiring a Ph.D., the candidate's research must somehow be linked to the organization's needs. When it involves hiring a person with experience, that experience must also be somehow linked to the organization's needs. The importance of a well-defined job description cannot be overemphasized, but the description must also be realistic. Too many people with advanced degrees and experience somehow fail to meet expectations.

When you find a candidate who meets the requirements of the job description, make an offer. Managers too often find a candidate who meets the job requirements but then continue the interview process. What a waste of time. My comment to these managers is to either hire the person or change the job description. If the candidate meets the requirements, why vacillate? If you say that the person you interviewed "meets all the requirements, but I might find someone better," then evidently the candidate does not really meet the requirements.

The key to hiring the right people depends on the manager who conducts the interview process. While the job description is important and can guide the direction of the interview, the process involves going beyond the written word. What do you want to learn about the candidate? You have obviously been interviewed in your years of experience as a professional; what did you learn from those interviews? They should have taught you a great deal about the process and the interviewers.

Were these interviews social chitchat or did the interviewer get down to a nuts and bolts kind of discussion about the requirements and your ability to meet the requirements? Did the interviewer ask you to discuss the specifics of your contributions with other organizations and focus on your track record? Did the interviewer go beyond what was on the employment application? Did the interviewer ask the hard questions in relation to your ability to travel, to relocate to another city or take a foreign assignment, to put in the overtime when necessary, to work on multiple projects, and your ability to not only accept change but to pursue it? If you've ever gone through a rigorous interview process as a professional in your discipline you should have no difficulty framing your questions in such a way as to find out what this candidate is capable of doing.

What are some approaches to discovering a candidate's competencies, attitudes, and characteristics? At the undergraduate or semiprofessional level, academic credentials coupled with other interests and experience provide about the only possibilities to evaluate the candidate. The academic credentials are a given and class standing cannot be disputed. But that academic standing must fit the job requirements. Managers too often minimize the other interests and experience category. Exploration of these other interests and experience—even if that experience consists entirely of part-time jobs held while going to school—provides a great deal of information about the candidate's attitudes and characteristics. They often demonstrate personal initiative, ability to work not just with others but also alone if necessary, the ability to both accept and influence change, the ability to communicate at all levels, and the ability to lead.

For hiring candidates with advanced degrees or with prior directly related job experience, I have used two approaches successfully:

1. Ask the candidate to give a presentation to a select group of people on a related topic. The candidate may be asked to give an impromptu presentation of his or her field of interest.

2. Pose a problem and ask how the candidate might approach the problem. This approach gives you information about what the candidate may have contributed personally in previous jobs. It is necessary to sort out the individual's contribution from the team's contribution. You are not hiring the rest of the team.

What are you as the manager going to tell the candidate about the department? The candidate has probably received the public relations package about the organization but how will you supplement that with information about your own and related departments? Will you provide an opportunity for the candidate to speak to people in your group to gain their impressions of the real world? Will you give the candidate a tour of the department and related areas? Will you fully explain the type of work that is performed by the department; actually go through some typical projects but maintaining confidentiality where necessary? Will you give the candidate some idea of what the first work assignments might be? The interview process is a two-way street; you must understand the strengths and limitations of the candidate and the candidate must leave with a full and realistic understanding of the job requirements and possible assignments.