Any good recruiter or hiring manager will agree that finding great technical talent these days is hard.  Besides possessing exceptional technical skills many of us are also looking for candidates that have great interpersonal skills, business savvy and the ability to fit into our corporate culture.  Given all these requirements, what should we do to make sure we've found the right match?  Here are a few suggestions that might help as your are making your decision.

Be objective...B-E O-B-J-E-C-T-I-V-E! - This isn't easy when you click with a person as soon as they walk into your office.  I know I have been guilty of this on occasion, but I am here to be your cheerleader in doing this with each candidate for every position.   The first step is to make sure you can get past the first impression reserving your judgment for after the interviews are over.  The next step is to develop a set of objective questions that you can use to evaluate candidates on both their technical and non-technical skills.  Determine what you are looking for and make sure your questions are open ended providing you with the opportunity to probe deeper into areas that you may need more information.  You don't have to be robotic in making sure you check each question off your list, but do be sure that the candidate doesn't leave you with lingering questions.  After your interview, sit down and either write out your impressions or share them with your hiring team.  This will help you analyze the person and see if others agree with your findings. 

Consider a pre-screening process - I've heard of a lot of companies spending time, and more importantly money, to fly candidates in for interviews only to find out that they are not the right match for the position.  Worse yet, ever have to fly someone out again because they didn't meet with everyone or you didn't get as much information as you hoped during the interviews?  I have always found phone screens to be helpful in vetting out candidates either on technical merit, business skills or in other areas where there isn't a match (product development interest, relocation etc).  When working with hiring managers it worked great to have me ask a few technical and behavior questions to evaluate for basic skills and then have a hiring manager or team member get on the phone and dive deeper into technical projects and skills.  This usually averaged about 1-2 total hours of our time between setting up the call, conducting the screen and then making the decision.  In the end though, it saved us from making the wrong decisions on flying people out or wasting whole days on interviews with candidates that clearly weren't a match or interested in the job.

Try out different interview models and methods - We walk a fine line in making an interview process too rigorous and turning away candidates (we've all heard the stories about Google and Microsoft) and not spending enough time evaluating candidates.  I can't tell you what's right for your business, but what worked best for me was having candidates evaluated and interviewed by more then one hiring manager or team member.  Keeping the rules of being objective in mind, the group would get together and split up topic areas to cover with the candidates.   We'd try to have each candidate come in within a few days of each other and then share our impressions of each candidate in a wrap up meeting at the end of the interview sessions or real time throughout the day.  We could make hiring decisions on the spot and extend offers the same day if needed to close high priority candidates.  But, you should try different models to see what works for you and your company.  The key is to make sure the process answers all your questions and helps you make an informed decision.

Think about a probationary period for employment - Donald Trump does it, why shouldn't we?  Even though we went through a vigorous interview process with candidates I always felt a little like we were jumping into a marriage after only one date.  I wish that we had considered a trial period or apprenticeship, especially with junior candidates, were both parties had an opportunity to evaluate the job and performance on the job real time.  It's definitely a risk and not something that every company can consider, but it could end up saving everyone time, money and heartache in the end.

What about you?  What do you think has worked best when finding and evaluating the right people for the job?

Good luck! 

zoe