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The 7 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Cut Corners On Reference Checks. This question originally appeared on Quora: How do you optimize reference checks for prospective employees? Answer by Auren Hoffman, CEO of LiveRamp, on Quora References checks are really important. Here is a guide on how to do them and how to get them. One: try to get as many references as possible from a candidate. Reference checking is important for a few reasons. Second, it gives you a window on how best to manage the candidate if you do hire her. Third, the list of references themselves tell you something about the person. Fourth, look for how quickly the references get back to you.

Fifth is to look for consistency. Sixth -- find out how the candidate has changed over time. And seventh -- references can often predict a candidate's future. How do you optimize reference checks for prospective employees? 5 skills employers want that you won’t see in a job ad. Ask senior executives in New York, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, Seattle, Shanghai, Beijing or London what their biggest concern is and they will all tell you the same thing.

It’s not capital, technology, regulatory changes or economic uncertainty. It’s talent. And not just talent generally, but talent possessing some specific soft skills beyond conventional business and engineering training. That was the answer leaders and key faculty from the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California heard during three years of research, including in-depth interviews with C-Suite and senior executives from a broad range of industries and from Fortune 50 companies to start-ups. That soft skills are in short supply isn’t news. What is news is what executives expect those soft skills to bring to their organizations. Intellectual Curiosity: a deep hunger to learn and grow and a willingness to experiment in order to learn. Ernest J. 6 Interview Questions You Must Ask if You Want to Hire the Best People | Inc.com.

There's no lack of sources for canned interview questions. A quick Google search on the phrase interview questions turns up about 20 million hits! Good luck with that. In 30 years of interviewing people for roles in fast-paced startup cultures, I've come to realize that the vast majority of standard interview questions are useless. Yes, I know that sounds harsh, but the reality is that most interviewing guidelines have been developed for larger companies that have square holes they need to fill with square pegs. If you wanted cookie cutter employees, you'd be running a cookie cutter business, and you're not doing that--right? Conformance, standardized qualifications, and a general lack of disruptive personality tend to work best for large companies. The most important thing I want to understand when hiring people is what drives them.

So here are a few of the questions that I ask and why I ask them. Are you driven by the determination to succeed or the fear of failure? How To Ask 'What Does This Job Pay?' Smarter Alternatives To The Usual Stupid Interview Questions. Tired Of Recruiting's Broken Image, Airbnb Rewrites The Playbook. The Exact Hiring Formula That Will Help You Find The Right People. Eric Feng made a lot happen at Hulu in just three years. As the first senior executive the company hired, he played a pivotal role in the development of Hulu.com, the desktop app, distribution and advertising. He served as spokesperson and even coded large part of the site's front-end himself.

And it paid off — Hulu rose to become the No. 2 video site on the internet, drawing 43 million unique viewers a month. But one accomplishment made all of this possible: He hired extremely well. By the time he left the company, he'd recruited and led an 80-person technology organization that spanned engineering, product management, design and operations. You have to be as data-driven about your hiring as you are about your product. "As W. Getting Started The first formula you'll need is an easy one. Sourcing Screening Interviewing Hiring When you think about how many people you need to hire, just do some quick division (or multiplication, that is, depending on which end you’re starting at).

Tactics for Asking Good Follow-Up Questions - HBR. Whether you are looking to hire someone, decide whether to trust someone, or enter a business partnership, the better you are at judging people, the better off you will be. Unfortunately, most people are just plain bad at reading others. Several decades of research among psychologists has indicated all sorts of blind spots, biases, and judgment errors we make in assessing people. Much of that research has focused on the mental processes we use to interpret what we see or hear. But errors also occur way before that – the problem can begin with the questions we ask to understand people in the first place. When you want to get a read on someone, what questions do you ask?

Most people have go-to questions. In my experience conducting interview-based assessments for the last 12 years, I have found that this is because the first answer to one of these questions is only marginally helpful and may even be irrelevant. But the key to understanding people lies in the follow-up question. 1. 2. 3. Introverts, Extroverts, and the Job Interview: How to Hire a Fair, Balanced Team. A Radical, New Way to Interview Job Candidates. What to Do When You Find a Perfect Hire. The Best Way to Get to Know a Candidate During a Job Interview. "What are your greatest weaknesses? " "Where do you want to be in 10 years? " "Tell me about a time when you overcame an obstacle. " You've likely encountered questions or prompts like these during a job interview, or asked them yourself. In theory, they're supposed to reveal a candidate's true personality and help determine if he or she would be a good fit for the position.

According to Richard Davis, a management psychologist and partner at RHR International LLP, getting a good read on someone is all about the follow-up questions. "In my experience conducting interview-based assessments for the last 12 years, I have found that this is because the first answer to one of these questions is only marginally helpful and may even be irrelevant," Davis writes in Harvard Business Review. The thing about follow-up questions is that it requires that you pay close enough attention to the candidate's answers so that you can build on them. 1. 2. 3.