There are three essential elements to selecting the right person for the job. This article will focus on the selection process in order to make the best decision from your pool of candidates.
You must do a good job of attracting enough qualified candidates in order to have a good selection of applicants to choose from. This includes writing a good job posting based on a good job description. Knowing what you want is essential for marketing the position and the job description will do this and help you enormously in the selection process.
- Skill fit
The person must have the knowledge and skills to do the job and this is determined by their past experience, education, ongoing learning etc. You can determine the skill fit from the resume, but you will need to verify if all that is written is true. Most people exaggerate their skills, knowledge and accomplishments and might even lie about their education. Background checks can help verify the information. As well you can conduct specific skills testing that you develop yourself or use a service. During the interview you will also ask questions about their past to gauge their response as part of their presentation.
- Company fit
The person must fit with the company and more specifically with the people in the department and the team members. This is something you determine in the interview. It is basically measuring how you feel about the person. It is important to stay as objective as you can during the interview and treat all candidates the same. This is often hard to do even for skilled interviewers as everyone is swayed by their emotions, of course to a greater or lesser degree. Remember that someone might be well qualified for the job with great knowledge and skills. But if the person always worked in larger structured organizations and your company is small, it might not be a great fit. If your company lacks the structure that the person was used to working with they might not be compatible unless they can adapt themselves quickly. This is where assessments can greatly help.
- Job fit
The person must also fit with the job. This means the persons thinking style; behavioral style and job interests are within a good range for the job requirements. This can only be reliably determined quickly using assessments. There are many excellent assessments on the market but not all are designed or suitable for use in hiring. The best assessments like the Profile XT, matches the person to a job profile. Each job should have a unique job profile based on the requirements of the job. This is where having a good job description is again beneficial. The Profile XT assessment provides starting job patterns based on role descriptions done by the US Department of Labour and available on the O-Net website. These job descriptions are also a great source of information for writing your own job descriptions and greatly speed up the process. 
The Profile XT is a total person assessment tool as it measures thinking style, behavioral traits and job interests and matches all of these to the job.
Doing a good job at applying these three essential elements can increase your ability to hire and select top performers by over 75% than relying on interviews alone.
Stephen Goldberg