Recruiting for top performers is a key strategy for many companies. Top performers tend to be the employees who grow within the organization, are ambitious and can deliver results. Its importance has led many recruiters to contemplate how we can spot potential top performers in an organization.
Here are three reasons that flexibility should be one of the key skills to look out for in your next prospective top performers.
- Recruiting Flexible Employees Leads to Team-Players
By recruiting candidates that have demonstrated the skills and attitudes required to be flexible in the workplace, you’re more likely to end up with team-players at the top of your organization.
If a candidate is happy to be flexible, they will be focused more on team efforts than on their specific remit and job specification. Flexible employees don’t say “that’s not my job”. They do whatever it takes to make sure the team is successful in their mission.
You’ll be able to spot flexibility in a candidate in the interview process if you ask the right probing questions. Often, if you ask them to describe a challenge that they have overcome as part of a team, you’ll spot what they were willing to do to resolve the situation.
Solving problems usually requires flexibility, so if they demonstrate an ability to problem-solve or thrive under pressure, you know that they can be flexible.
- Flexible Allows the Employee to Be Results-Oriented
If you don’t want an employee that just shows up for work at 9am and leaves as soon as the workday ends, you’ll want to be sure that they can be flexible.
It can be difficult to predict just when extra effort is needed to achieve the results desired, so flexibility will be key. This means that flexibility allows employees to be more results-oriented.
You can identify prospective flexible employees within the interview process. Notice how the candidate talks about their past experience and their past achievements. Specifically, notice which words they use.
If they talk about the achievements that they have achieved, or if they speak in a positive light about challenges that they have overcome, you are spotting signs of professional flexibility.
However, if they talk more about their responsibilities or their passions outside of the workplace, this may be a sign that they may not flexible.
- Flexible Employees Have Great People Skills
If the role you are recruiting for is a people-focused role, such as sales or management, people skills will be key.
The fact of the matter is, that people are not predictable. In many ways, people have different personalities, they have emotions and they can be different from one day to the next.
As it is people that make teams and organizations, you’ll need flexible employees to adapt to the differing needs and abilities of the people within the organization. That means being flexible to the changing needs of the team in order to deliver on results.