You get on best with people like you – those who are like-minded, those who do as you do, those who see the world as you do. So, when it comes to recruitment, it’s unsurprising that we tend to favour like-minded people.

What’s the problem with that, we hear you ask? If everyone in my team sees the world as I do, then we’ll be sure to all get on and be a highly productive team, won’t we?

Well that depends…!

At Anderson Scott we believe that it all comes down to being very clear about the type of person that you want in a particular role in your business. For us, that doesn’t just mean their experience – their skills and knowledge. In fact, past experience is the least accurate predictor of someone’s future success in a role.

We believe it means understanding the wider characteristics for your ideal candidate – understanding the complete individual. This includes other factors like their intellect, values, motivations and behaviours. Evidence shows that someone’s ability to be successful in a particular role is more determined by these other factors, rather than experience alone.

Once you break it down into these other categories, you can then start to think about the things that you are looking for and whether they need to be the same or different to you.

For example, lets first take Values.

We’re sure that you would agreed that a candidate’s ’cultural fit’ with a team or organisation is a critical element in choosing for right person for a job. Cultural fit boils down to whether a candidate shares the same values and beliefs as you and your business, or not. So, in this instance, the assertion that you are best to recruit like-minded people holds absolutely holds true.

However, the problem we find with values is that very few businesses have them or are guided by them. Those that actually do have them, rarely use them in the recruitment process.

Often many employers fudge this by saying things like, “we get a feeling whether someone going fit in here or not.” or “we don’t know what it is but we know what it is when we see it.”   For us, this makes the recruitment process very subjective, and flawed, because we don’t know “what it is” the MD is looking for and often neither does the hiring manager. Also, when they get their “feeling whether someone’s going to fit in or not”, it’s almost always after they have started.

Much better to be clear, up front, exactly what your culture is – and the values that drive that culture. Then, seek to recruit people who match those values. Even better, measure whether that person actually holds those values, because values are a very difficult thing to ask someone about an interview, for example. That’s the Anderson Scott way – bringing objectivity and accuracy to the process through our range of psychometric tools.

However, it doesn’t stop there. Let’s consider behaviours next.

Behaviours are simply how people behave and act. Same as values, some people will have the same or different behaviours to you.

Some people like the big picture, some people like the opposite detail. Some people like dealing with people, some people like dealing with things. Some people like change, some people stability. These preferences drive someone’s behaviours.

Here’s the thing, and possibly the biggest mistake in recruitment, is that we are drawn to people who behave more like us than those who are different to us. The problem with this is that, often, we will need someone in our team who is different to us. We often need a big picture person to counteract our attention to detail, because going in to too much detail all the time means that sometimes we don’t get things done – and that becomes even worse with another detail person. Similarly, we often need a person who likes dealing with people as opposed to our preference for dealing with things, because the people side of the business gets ignored otherwise.

Again, the key thing here is to understand the type of person you want – not to just automatically assume you need someone like you for the wrong reasons. With behaviours, the chances are that you will want someone different or, at least, not exactly the same as you. Define it and, again, don’t leave it to chance. Here at Anderson Scott we have psychometric tools that can measure someone’s behaviour. We use them to objective assess someone’s ‘fit’ and not leave it to chance.

In fact, you need to think the same across all those things that make up the complete individual. Do you also want someone with the same level as intellect? The brightest is not always the best. Do you want someone who is motivated by the same things as you? Some people are motivated by money, some are motivated by personal achievement and, for others, the social aspect of work motivates them.

In each case, we recommend that you understand what it is you need, define it and then measure it. 75% of hires are miss-hires. Don’t make the mistake of a miss-hire just because you want people like you.