Chapter 13 of “What were they thinking” by Jeffrey Pfeffer has some excellent advice for hiring managers….the chapter, titled ‘Resumes Don’t Tell” has a subtitle that is the best piece of hiring advice I’ve heard in a long time:

Pick people for what they can do, not what they may have done.

I wish more hiring managers would heed this advice.

Of course, a person’s past accomplishments are an excellent way of telling you what that person has done and what they may be capable of doing, they aren’t a guarantee that the candidate will reach the same level of accomplishment while in your organization.

As I’ve mentioned before in previous posts, hiring is one of the most critical functions an organization can undertake and shouldn’t be taken lightly. A resume can tell you a lot about a persons credentials and past but very little about who the person really is and how they work, their ethics and the things that they are most passionate about.

[tags] hiring, human resources [/tags]