Let’s say you’re interviewing candidates for a technical position. Beyond the right set of technical skills, what do you look for in a candidate?

If you’re building a high performance team, you want more than strong technical knowledge and experience. You’re looking for the best of the best. You need a candidate that will raise the bar in your organization — the type of person that makes everyone better. You’re looking for the Total Package.

The candidate’s technical skills are the foundation of the total-package candidate. The candidate must demonstrate that they can perform the technical responsibilities at a high level.

But in addition to strong technical capabilities, total-package employees:

- Team at a high level and have strong customer focus skills
- Cut through noise; they zero in on the things that lead to success
- Push through the work items and navigate obstacles to deliver on the commitment
- Know how to deliver value

To assess total-package capabilities, ask the candidate about some of their accomplishments. Do they have a history of using their technical skills to deliver big accomplishments? Dig and probe into the details of the story. What were the obstacles, and how did the candidate handle them? What were the conflicts, and how did the candidate respond? What types of actions did the candidate take to understand the needs of the customer? How did they handle competing priorities?

You’re looking for specific details here: situations, actions, results. Generalities don’t help you assess the candidate’s performance. You may need to discuss two or three of the candidate’s accomplishments to develop a solid assessment of their total-package skills.

Mediocrity, or Worse

There are candidates out there that meet your technical requirements AND possess the total-package skills you need to help you build your high performance team.

You accept mediocrity when you settle for strong technical candidates without assessing total-package skills.

Or – in the worse-case scenario – you bring down a team by choosing a technically-strong candidate that doesn’t cooperate with their teammates, sows mistrust and distracts your org from the mission with other negative behaviors. Assessing candidates for total-package skills helps you avoid this disaster.

-Donny