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What are the best criteria for selecting a candidate?

Should it be his/her experience, or the academic performance, or the performance in the past two companies, the age, attitude and leadership skills or all of these? Most of the companies take into consideration all these factors as candidate selection criteria.

But how many of us do consider job competencies as a candidate selection criterion?

Job competencies of a person remain the same throughout the life if the person does not go for continuous self-development. He accumulates vast experience in career, but can it be used for every organization? Think about it! You have heard about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Now could have Bill Gates founded Apple and Steve Jobs Microsoft?

Experience counts only when a person is a right fit for any position.

Albert Einstein wrote, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

So, there is a definitive case, that competencies, not only experience; matters as candidate selection criteria if you are looking for the right people for the bus. If you are looking for performers who can achieve phenomenal growth in your organization.

Most of the cases people look for experience as a vital criterion for candidate selection. Because we have a habit of thinking the more the person is experienced, the more the person shall be skillful and effective. If a candidate has performed very well for the last few years, he/she shall perform in future also.

But this is not the case every time. There are times when a candidate who was a great performer in the previous organization, fails to prove his mettle in the new organization.

Why is it so?

It happens because every organization has different competency levels. Competencies required for sales in two FMCG companies can’t be the same or be it Concept marketing companies or telecom. The customer segment, targeted demographics, market segment may be different of two companies belonging to the same industry.

So, we try to rather play safe and hire pharma candidates for pharma companies in sales or poach candidates for FMCG companies from the rival FMCG companies, and so on. So, the hiring manager or the HR Department have fewer options.

Had it been the case of assessing the right competencies, not only the experience of candidates taken into account as a candidate selection criteria, the recruitment industry could have been delivered better hires,

Now it’s time to understand that not only experience but there are other criteria that should be considered while selecting a candidate.