Maybe you’ve worked with someone who made you look forward to going to work? Maybe it was the entire crew you worked with. When something went wrong, you covered for each other. Things kept moving forward. You inspired each other to be great. Your worklife entered a blissful state, even if only temporarily.

The people you work with need to have the competencies to do their job well, but what sets the right candidate apart goes beyond skillsets and more deeply into that person’s ability to work well with your team and bring out its best. So, yeah you need someone with core competencies, but if those don’t come with the desire to do great things or the curiosity to seek out different ways to do great things then they’re not worth much. And if those competencies don’t come in a package that plays well with others, then they can undermine your team, and that’s no good.

So how do you find these somewhat elusive qualities in an interview? It’s not easy, but maybe it’s not as hard as you think. You can usually get a feel for a person in the first few moments you meet. Yes, it’s interview day so everything will have that gleaming showroom quality, but you can usually glimpse beneath the veneer and get a real sense of someone. That glimpse should give you a sense of that person’s curiosity. That person’s ability to work with or without a roadmap. That person’s ability to make the office a fun place to go to for others. This may sound a little too human or uncorporate, but remember there is no algorithm that’ll tell you who’s really going be a good fit, and that’s why algorithms don’t make hiring decisions. You do. So trust your instincts about a person and their curiosities, ambitions and ability to play well with others.

About NextGen

NextGen is the brainchild of longtime telecom professionals with nearly 50 years of experience and millions of dollars in Telecom Recruiting Services. We focus on establishing long term relationships with our clients and candidates so we can recruit the best and the brightest in the telecom industry. This ‘quality over quantity’ approach is at the heart of everything we do and has resulted in successful job placements at Fortune 1000 firms worldwide.