How to Test for Attention to Detail

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

With private sector hiring in many fields offering more choices of people than positions, it’s important to look at your overall hiring process, break it down, and re-construct it in ways that identify and select people who meet your organization’s needs now and in the future.

In some jobs like those in IT, attention to detail is an important quality for the success of the new hire. How can you determine whether that is a quality a person has?

Here are a few ideas:

1. How’s their spelling and grammar?

For years, I avoided using this when I would evaluate resumes of people born outside the US. With time, I realized two things.

Don’t give a pass to people who are not native-born. Many have worked hard and with determination to adapt to a new language. Why shouldn’t that be recognized? After, people who are native often become lazy and incompetent at their use of grammar. Let’s acknowledge the effort that goes into excellence.

The second thing I realized is that some people are just too lazy to use the spelling and grammar checker in their word processing software. Why shouldn’t that be penalized?