Hiring for Agility

In an era where disruption is the new normal, you would understand why it is vital for businesses to be mindful of the type of talent that they source for. Being in a constantly changing environment requires an ability to respond swiftly to disruption as though one is even anticipating it as opposed to being victims of it. In a recent article I hinted that there was difference between having employees as solution providers and having them as experts. With the above case for the proper agility posture in a disruption I hope you can see why I made that assertion.

With respect to hiring for Agility and having on board those poised to deliver and provide business solutions, I believe there are signs that can make for success, hiring managers only need to be trained to look out for those signs and cues. In this regard, a lot has to do with the type of questions hiring managers ask.

In hiring for Agility, I believe the following tips will be relevant:

Growth Mindset: Ask questions that expose a candidate’s appetite for growth. E.g. What courses/learning have they recently exposed themselves to e.g. while COVID-19 lockdown lasted.

Curiosity Quotient: To unravel their curiosity quotient ask questions on the organisations they perceive are your major competition. If they’re keen on joining your team, they would’ve considered that bit before arriving at the interview. I recall once in a learning session where the participants drawn from across several branches of the organisation could not agree on who their major competition was!

Also consider asking who #GeorgeFloyd was or indeed any major news making global headlines. The response is your cue to understanding if they care about their environment and by extension – if they will care about your business environment.

Feedback: To gauge their propensity for receiving feedback and gunning for improvement, ask them to share on how they’ve responded in the past to certain unfavorable feedback obtained either from a boss, colleague of customer. At the core of AGILE methodology in product development [IT] is the quest to obtain customer feedback and to use that for continuous product improvement purposes. Ensuring this propensity will be vital for your business improvement.

Customer Focus: It is important to ascertain a candidate’s philosophy around customer experience. If you’re observant like me, you would find that most businesses in this clime act like the customer was made for the business rather than the other way round. You could therefore channel your questions around different customer facing scenarios & focus on their customer experience centricity or the lack of it.

Lean Philosophy: This would apply to the hiring of managers and/or top executives. You could ask questions around their approach to hiring talent in uncertain times. Why? Many managers still erroneously hold onto that mindset of hiring on a wimp; of the thinking that having just one more hire is the only solution to higher production levels. Thing is, before persons like these realize, their headcount is out of order & when they hit a bad time, they’re the first to lay people off! Meaning their response to talent issues is more knee jerk than strategic.

I hope this helps! I’ll be happy to know if you find these tips valuable in your hiring for Agility – now & in the future.