How to Hire More Creativity into Your Organisation
Let’s be honest.
What recent changes have you made to your recruitment process to better hire more creativity into your organisation?
A major overhaul? A few tweaks? None?
For every interview that is conducted by interviewers sitting crossed-legged on the table or selection process that uses gamification as a recruitment tool, there are hundreds being conducted in the traditional style.
You know the type.
The candidate and the interviewer endure the interrogation
The candidate and the interviewer sit on either side of a table. From across the divide, the interviewer lobs competency-based questions at the candidate which have been selected from a bank of HR-sanctioned interview questions. Both the candidate and the interviewer endure the interrogation that follows. During this time, the interview-savvy candidate will respond with a volley of coached responses to the barrage of standard, recycled questions.
And the result? Advantage, homogeneity!
The increasing use of psychometric tests and gamification tools are a beacon of hope in transforming recruitment processes. They are valuable in assessing a candidate’s aptitude for roles which require a high level of creativity. Whilst they are a useful indicator of ability, they fall short in establishing whether an ‘able’ candidate is ‘willing’ to contribute their creativity and other valuable skills beyond the heady courtship phase of the interview and offer stages.
Let’s be honest.
Not every organisation is willing or able to overhaul their recruitment process and replace it with more creative hiring practices.
Advantage, homogeneity!
The mindset of ‘stick-with-what-we-have-always-done’ stubbornly persists.
More often than we care to admit, the appetite to make the necessary changes resides more in our hopes than in the reality we encounter.
Business owners, HR practitioners, recruiters and hiring managers still often exclusively interview for experience, standard technical skills, pedigree and culture fit. The traditional job interview remains a cornerstone of recruitment strategy and a default tool for talent selection.
The long-standing best practice competency-based interview is great if you are hiring individuals to perform defined roles and standardised functions. It works a treat if you are looking to fill jobs that have little need for the job holder to apply autonomous solutions finding or creative problem solving or make decisions on the fly in favour of the customer.
The traditional behavioural interview is based on the premise that a candidate’s past performance, demonstrating these competencies in a variety of situations, is a strong indicator (predictor) that they will demonstrate these desired competencies again in similar situations.
Let’s be honest.
You know that a candidate’s past ‘stellar’ performance is not a guarantee of future ‘rock star’ contribution in their new employer’s establishment – and that means your organisation too.
A candidate’s past ‘stellar’ performance is not a guarantee of future ‘rock star’ contribution
The Traditional Interview Has Had Its Day
What can we do instead?
There are those who are tin-eared. They will continue to stubbornly cling to the old style interview with no change. They remain steadfast in the belief that it guarantees hiring success no matter the new reality that may contradict that worldview.
There are others who are willing to change but are struggling to give up the comfortable and familiar way of hiring and processes that have passed their usefulness and relevance.
As facilitators of transformation and promoters of creativity, sometimes we must meet people where they are in the creativity or change continuum. We need to find practical ways to help organisations get unstuck and take incremental steps towards the change needed. This may mean reassessing the familiar hiring processes, keeping the bones but giving them a much-needed facelift.
How to Recruit for Creativity and 6 More Super Skills
[clickToTweet tweet=”There is absolutely no need for HR processes to be devoid of creativity. Really! ” quote=”There is absolutely no need for HR processes to be devoid of creativity. Really! ” theme=”style6″]What if we redesigned the traditional interview whilst paying homage to the beloved format that has seen better days?
What if we harnessed candidate interviewing as a powerful tool for discovery as opposed to judgment?
What if we tune in and use it as an amplifier to listen for clues that will reveal creativity hidden in side-gigs, passion projects and non-work pursuits?
Listen for clues that will reveal creativity hidden in side-gigs
What if we reimagined and edited the questions, changing the narrative and flipping the script from interrogation to meaningful conversations?
By repurposing the classic interview and redesigning the questions to initiate a conversation, we set the scene to hear authentic stories that go beyond the curated candidate profiles and sterile responses.
When we interview candidates with a mind-set to learn, “what is your story?” as opposed to “how can we can fit you into a labelled box on the organisation chart”, we set the stage to discover common ground and the unique value in original thinking, or different perspective that can point the way to a shared purpose and contribution fit.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Hiring for creativity? You need to invite and roll out the welcome mat for the ruckus makers.” quote=”Hiring for creativity? You need to invite and roll out the welcome mat for the ruckus makers.” theme=”style6″]Don’t miss out on opportunities to see how these individuals can create value in ways more timid recruiters may have overlooked.
If you are serious about hiring more creativity into your organisation, you need to invite and roll out the welcome mat for the ruckus makers.
“Originals are constructive contrarians. They’re not just pointing out that the emperor has no clothes; they’re also tailors.”
Adam Grant on ‘Interviewing to Hire Trailblazers, Nonconformists and Originals’ in First Round Review.
Finding and connecting with people with fantastic stories, interests and skills that can have a direct and positive impact on growing the business is possible.
But you will not achieve this with the same old interview questions. Sad but true. Uncreative questions attract uncreative responses; and repel creative-minded candidates.
Try this instead…
It started as my private collection of ‘interesting’ questions to relax candidates and learn more about the human being behind the CV/application form. I wanted a practical way to get past coached candidate responses and hire remarkable employees with grit, fire and tonnes of personality.
I’ve compiled the best of these into a Remarkable Employee Hiring Guide with the best of my Creative HR interview questions and my personal assessor notes. I call them the Super Skills interview questions because they’re focused on getting to the normally-overlooked traits that help you hire more creativity into your organisation.
I’ve identified seven Super Skills, which are:
- Creativity
- plus Curiosity
- Unlearning-Learning
- Kindness
- Empathy
- Gratitude
- and being Purpose-Powered
The conversational-style interview guide has 30 Super Skill-detecting interview questions to help you to uncover your candidate’s real aspirations and talents. This discovery will allow you and your candidate to determine ‘contribution fit’ for your business purpose.
Download it. Tell me how you get on. And good luck in finding the right people
You can download Nicole’s guide for FREE at her website. We’re really keen to know how you get on with it and if you have any other suggestions of skills to look for and questions to ask.
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Nicole writes stories about her Creative HR journey and shares tips and discoveries in The HR Rabbit Hole blog.
