Earlier this week I wrote a blog post that started a list of the Top 5 Things You Can Do To Improve Hiring. I am trying to offer simple but high-impact exercises that companies and Hiring Managers can engage in to improve their hiring predictability.
#1 was “Work Backwards to Create a Job Description”. Start from the 1 year review instead of trying to create a Job Description from Scratch.
#2 was “Write a Scorecard”. By knowing what the 5-7 things are that you’re looking for you’ll be less likely to hire someone because you really like their personality.
Here are the other three things that you can do today, without much effort, to have a significant impact on your hiring predictability.
3. Implement a screening process that allows you to rapidly “screen to exclusion”. A Topgrading interview is 4 hours long. Not many people can actually conduct more than 2 or 3 of those without getting burned out. To quickly screen your large candidate pool, try implementing 2 or 3 quick steps before conducting any “real” interviews. Remember through the process that you’re trying to find reasons to take people out of contention, not include them. Some examples:
a. Rapid Resume Review: have they had more than 3 jobs in the last 8 years? Have they changed industries more than once? Have they taken a demotion for no obvious reason?
b. 10 Minute Phone Screen: ask two or three quick questions and score the answers.
i. This role requires that you have experience establishing metrics around profitability of our various retail products. Are you qualified to handle this?
ii. Would you please share with me a specific example of how you’ve done this in the past?
iii. And what did you learn through doing this?
If they really impress you with their answers to these three questions you’ll gain the clarity of knowing that they’re worth spending more time learning about the rest of their background and how they might fit into your organization.
4. Ensure that your job postings are in places where people can find them. Significantly increasing the volume of candidates who apply for your role can make a huge impact on your ability to hire effectively. When you post, ensure that the website is tied in with some of the more popular job posting aggregators like Indeed.com or SimplyHired.com. Try to also find niche websites where the traffic will be much lower but the quality of the eyeballs is higher. Make an effort to seek out local associations or user groups (example: Java User Groups or JUGS exist in every major metro area).
5. Interview for behaviors instead of relying on a resume. Even if you’ve only created a rough scorecard and you’re trying some of these tactics for the first time, interviewing for specific behaviors will yield significantly better results than simply going from role to role on a resume and letting a prospective employee tell you about just the things they want to bring up. Ask why they were hired in a role? Were they successful? Why or Why Not? What specifically were they engaged in that would make them uniquely qualified for your position? Beware the applicants who have never made mistakes (or won’t admit them).
