ITauthor

Finding the right person for a job is a little bit like finding the right house. Any time I've been looking for a new house it's been because I've moved somewhere new and I need to find a house within a defined timeframe. I've taken on a six month rent initially just to give me a chance to settle in and get to know the area, and I don't want to find somewhere right away because I've just committed to six months rent. So I give it a few months, settle into my new job and then start looking for a house. That means, in reality, I've maybe got three months to find a house and move in so that I don't have to pay another six months' rent.

The point is that you only get to choose from what happens to be available within that little time slot. Despite the fact that this is the place where you're going to live for the next few years, maybe many years, you have to choose from the few properties that happen to come up for sale right when you've looking.

Filling a position within a company is a bit like that. As the recruiter, you've got to choose from what's available. And if you've got a good recruitment agency working for you, and you're lucky, you might just get some great candidates applying. Now what you've got to watch out for is that you don't blow your chance of getting a great candidate take the job.

A great place to live will be lived in for years and years. The people who live there will be in no rush to leave. So that house maybe only comes up for sale once every twenty or thirty years. And when it does, it'll be sold in a week at the price the seller wants to get. If you take a week off from your house searching, you might miss it. If you see it and love it, but you hum and haw about the price and then decide maybe you'll be able to bid low and steal it, then you'll miss out and live to regret it. I'm speaking from experience here. I still remember a fantastic house in Portobello I wish we'd bid more for.

Similarly with great candidates for that role you need to fill. The really good tech authors or developers or testers - if they're looked after by an employer and nurtured in their careers - maybe only only come on the market once in ten years.

As the recruiter you've got to make sure that you remember that the great candidate is not desperate to have this job you're trying to fill. The interview should not be like an interview down your local nick: "We ask the questions sonny!" This is a two-way trading of skills, experience and labour in return for a great working environment, interesting work to stimulate and stretch the candidate, and a great package of benefits (not just cash, but a decent spec laptop, up-to-date software, no skimping on the budget for software and books, a work-from-home policy, food if you have to work through lunch or in the evening - all the kind of stuff that avoids people feeling like they're just working for the man).

I've been recruiting for a new tech author recently and I always try to remind myself, before I go into an interview, of the one that got away. The candidate who shone out as an obvious big asset for the company, who I failed to sell the job to, and when I offered him the job he turned it down. Hiring and firing are two of the most important things to the health of a company - especially for a fairly small company. For a company of ten thousand, one bad hiring doesn't have a huge impact unless it's at director level. For a company of a hundred, one bad hire at any level will hurt, and one great hire will make a positive difference that will ripple throughout the company. For that reason, letting a great hire slip from your grasp is a serious offence but an offence for which the offender is never punished.

As a recruiter your job has two imperatives:

1) Make sure you choose the best person for the job. There may not always be a great candidate, you may have to just choose the best of the good ones. But you've got to make sure this person is right for the job and right for the company. There are many thousands of pounds at stake here. Chances are the hiring decision is the biggest single purchase you'll ever make on the company's behalf. Spend it like it was your own money.

2) Make sure you don't miss out. In any job interview, the candidate is selling himself and you're testing and judging him. But remember he is testing and judging you too. He knows a bit about the company - knows enough to think that maybe it might be a cool place to spend most of his waking hours for the next few years, but he doesn't need to come and work here and it's up to you to sell him the job and the company. Why is this a great place to work? Why is it such an interesting job? If you can't answer those questions convincingly to yourself you shouldn't be conducting the interview.

Job interviews are for both sides of the table, but all too often - especially when it's several of you versus one candidate - the interviewers forget that there needs to be give as well as take.

Personally I try to avoid overuse of set questions. I prefer conversations to stock questions and stilted answers. And if the conversation is heading in an interesting direction and you're getting to know the candidate, then keep it going with ad hoc questions. Interviewers who rigidly confine themselves to a set of prepared questions on the grounds that everybody must be treated identically, are merely depriving themselves of getting to know the candidates and therefore getting the kind of information that will help them identify the best person for the job.

Two things to avoid as an interviewer are:

1) Setting a time limit to the interview. Sometimes you'll know someone is right within the first ten minutes. If you know this beyond doubt, the interview shouldn't take long. Sometimes you'll know someone is wrong within the first ten minutes. If you know this beyond doubt, you should start wrapping things up immediately. I don't like being rude to people, but continuing an interview when you know you're not going to offer them the job is dishonest. However, sometimes an interview just needs more time than you'd expected and, in that situation, if you need more time, take more time.

2) Saving candidate questions to the end. If you've spent two hours firing questions at a candidate and then you allow them to ask a couple of questions, you haven't really bought into the idea that this interviewing business is a two-way thing. If it's a great job and she is a great candidate then you should be as keen to hire her as she is to get the job, and the questions/answers should be pretty evenly numbered from either side (except the candidate is on your turf so, inevitably, and rightly, the interview is going to be led by you).

Never allow the situation to arise where you go away having found out all you need to know about the candidate and happy that you can offer the job to someone who you are confident will be great in the job, while the candidate has gone away unsure what the job really is, not convinced there's enough to keep her interested and fulfilled, and doubtful that the working conditions will be any better than those she has now. If all you do to a great candidate is convince her that she's much better off where she is now than she'd previously thought, then you've failed big time.

Take it from me, I've made that mistake once. Never again. I hope.