Hiring the right candidate sounds simple. Yet here’s an interesting test: Think about the best employee on your team today.
Now forget everything you know about that person.
Forget their accomplishments for a moment. Set aside the expertise they’ve gained and the problems they’ve solved. Instead, think only about the candidate they were when they first applied.
Would you hire them today?
More importantly, would your current hiring process even give them an interview?
It’s a question worth asking.
Hiring the Right Candidate Starts With the Right Requirements
Job descriptions have a habit of growing.
A manager leaves, and the company starts searching for a replacement. However, instead of evaluating what the position needs now, the old job description gets updated.
A new software requirement gets added. Then another stakeholder adds an industry preference. Someone increases the years of experience. Eventually, several preferred qualifications become requirements.
Before long, the company isn’t simply finding the right candidate. It’s searching for someone who perfectly matches a checklist.
In defense, engineering, manufacturing, IT, and other technical fields, some requirements truly are non-negotiable. Citizenship, security clearance eligibility, licenses, certifications, safety experience, or specialized technical knowledge may be essential.
Those requirements should remain.
The challenge is knowing what belongs on that list—and what doesn’t.
Would Your Best Employee Pass Today’s Candidate Selection Process?
This is where the exercise gets interesting.
Look at one of your strongest employees and consider what their resume looked like when you hired them.
Did they have every preferred qualification?
Perhaps they hadn’t used every system your company uses. Maybe they came from an adjacent industry rather than the exact one you wanted. And were they already capable of doing everything they do today?
For many great employees, the answer is no.
They became exceptional because they learned. Over time, they adapted, asked questions, solved problems, and grew with the organization.
Yet an overly rigid candidate selection process can screen out those same qualities before a hiring manager ever speaks with the person.
Finding the Right Candidate Isn’t About Lowering Standards
There is an important distinction here.
Expanding how you evaluate candidates does not mean lowering your hiring standards. Instead, it means making those standards more meaningful.
For each requirement, ask whether someone truly needs that skill on day one. If the answer is yes, keep it.
Next, consider whether a strong candidate could learn the skill within a reasonable period. If so, perhaps it belongs in the preferred category.
Finally, ask whether the qualification actually predicts success in the role. If nobody can explain why it matters, reconsider it.
This approach becomes especially important as jobs evolve. The World Economic Forum’s skills-first framework encourages employers to focus on skills and competencies rather than relying primarily on degrees, job histories, or previous titles.
That doesn’t eliminate credentials where they’re necessary. Rather, it helps employers distinguish between evidence of capability and requirements that may simply reflect how they’ve always hired.
Better Candidate Selection Looks Beyond the Resume
A resume is valuable, but it’s also incomplete.
It tells you where someone worked and what they say they did. However, it can’t fully show how someone thinks, learns, communicates, or approaches an unfamiliar problem.
That’s where better evaluation matters.
For example, structured interviews can explore how candidates solved actual problems in previous roles. Technical discussions can reveal how they approach unfamiliar situations. In some positions, practical assessments can demonstrate skills more effectively than another line on a resume.
However, the process shouldn’t become an obstacle course either.
SHRM’s guidance on skills-based hiring discusses approaches such as structured interviews, job simulations, portfolio reviews, and assessments that can help employers evaluate real-world capabilities.
The goal isn’t to make candidates prove themselves repeatedly. Instead, employers should gather the information they actually need to make a confident hiring decision.
Hiring Great Employees Requires Looking Forward
There’s another problem with hiring solely from a checklist: you’re often evaluating someone’s past when you should also consider their future.
Suppose two candidates meet the essential requirements.
One has performed almost the exact job before. The other has slightly less direct experience but demonstrates strong technical fundamentals, curiosity, adaptability, and a history of taking on increasingly difficult responsibilities.
Who is the better hire?
There isn’t a universal answer.
That’s precisely the point.
Effective hiring decisions require judgment. While experience matters, the best candidate for today’s opening may also be the person capable of handling tomorrow’s challenges.
As a result, hiring managers should consider not only what candidates have already done, but also what their track record suggests they can learn to do next.
Three Questions for Hiring the Right Candidate
Before eliminating someone who doesn’t check every preferred box, consider three questions:
- Which qualifications are truly essential for this person to succeed?
- Which missing skills could we realistically teach?
- What qualities made our current top performers successful here?
That third question may be the most revealing.
Perhaps adaptability helped your strongest employees succeed. Maybe it was problem-solving, accountability, communication, technical curiosity, or a combination of several qualities.
Whatever the answer, your hiring process should help you recognize those characteristics in new candidates.
Otherwise, you may be screening for the right resume instead of screening for future success.
Are You Hiring the Right Candidate—or the Right Resume?
Hiring will always involve some risk. No interview process can predict exactly how someone will perform.
However, companies can improve their odds by becoming more deliberate about what they’re evaluating.
Keep the requirements that protect the business, customer, project, or mission. At the same time, challenge requirements that don’t clearly contribute to success. Then give qualified candidates an opportunity to demonstrate what they can actually do.
Most importantly, remember the employee you thought about at the beginning of this article.
If your current hiring process would have screened that person out years ago, it may be time to reconsider the process.
At CPI, we help organizations identify and recruit skilled professionals for specialized roles while providing workforce solutions that can adapt to changing business needs.
Because sometimes hiring the right candidate starts with recognizing that the right candidate may not look exactly like you expected.
