I think I’m a very lucky guy because I often get to interview and hire people.
This might be an unusual perspective because many others dread running a hiring process, but not me. Even if they don’t get the job, candidates I meet during my hiring processes often remark on how much they appreciate the clarity of communication, and the opportunity to share what they did well. I love helping people feel like they did their best job sharing themselves, and I will share their name with recruiters I meet for other positions.
We all have our unique interests: Some people love the eternal search for the best nachos, others enjoy knitting toilet paper cozies, while some are called to offer comfort to those in need. I just seem to love all the aspects involved in helping people find good work and helping institutions find good people!
I’d like to share with you what I’ve learned about hiring after having run several hundred processes. I think that there are four buckets applicants fall into, and it is overwhelmingly the fourth bucket, which produces recipients of job offers. Here is how you end up in the fourth bucket more often.
Carefully consider the kind of candidate you are against my criteria below, and it should help you determine whether you should consider applying for a given job at all, or at least, what it might take to push yourself into being closer to an employer’s ideal candidate.
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