Hiring Consultant Shares How to Evaluate Soft Skills
A shop we recently profiled has changed its hiring practices to favor personal strengths over manufacturing skills. The consultant working with this shop elaborates, giving tips for manufacturing hiring including how to identify these strengths.
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Tony Staub (left) has dramatically changed what he looks for in evaluating machine-shop employees. At the two links in the text below, find our original article describing the shop owner’s change, and also read some additional insights provided by the hiring consultant Mr. Staub works with.
Readers of our recent article describing Staub Machine’s change in hiring philosophy—the shop now hires for personal strengths instead of aiming for metalworking skills—asked about the role of the consultant mentioned in the article. The consultant, whom the article does not name, helps this shop evaluate prospective hires for attributes such as communication ability and the capacity to learn.
His name is Patrick Crotty. The firm he founded is PXC Associates in Orchard Park, New York. He works with various manufacturers on recruitment, and he says the place to evaluate candidates’ soft skills is in the interview. Most hiring managers dislike interviews and have too little experience with them, he says, so they end up doing most of the talking. I recently reached out to him, and he shared these thoughts on evaluating prospective manufacturing employees.
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