Whether you're a corporate or external recruiter, there are four things you must be able to do in order to increase your influence with your hiring manager clients:

Measuring candidate quality is something many companies struggle with. But its importance is obvious: It's how you can assess the usefulness of your sourcing channels and of the recruiters involved; if done properly, it's also a way to assess the quality of the candidates hired compared to their subsequent on-the-job performance.

A few weeks ago, my wife of 35 years saw my eyes fill with tears as I was watching TV. Fortunately, I was watching a basketball game, so she knew it wasn't too serious. After 35 years, she knew immediately the cause, and responded, "Oh, that John Wooden fellow must be speaking again."

Probably everyone knows this already, but it's worth a reminder. There is one competency that overrides all others combined. I call it the master competency. In fact, during an interview you only need to assess a person for this one single competency to determine if the person is a good fit for the job. To make it even easier, you only need to ask one question to determine if the candidate possesses this trait or not.

Consider this: Based on hundreds of observations, about two-thirds of the time hiring errors can be attributed to one of three major interviewing mistakes. They're all easy to correct. It only takes a few simple steps which anyone can learn and use.

[Note: This is a rather technical article on how to improve your interviewing and recruiting skills. This information will be important to recruiters who want to find better people, learn how to recruit and negotiate offers, and increase their influence with their hiring manager clients. Do not read this article if none of these apply. - Lou Adler]

If you do things better, you'll get a nice raise, a pat on the back, some recognition, maybe even a promotion. If you do better things, you'll become famous.

Let me describe the single best interview question of all time: "Can you please describe your most significant accomplishment?" It's a great way to start an interview. I spend about 10 minutes on this question, gaining insight in the results achieved, the environment, and the process used to achieve the results. I then repeat the question to gain broader insight into the trend of team and individual accomplishments and see how they relate to specific job needs.