BECOMING AN EMPLOYER OF CHOICE PART 2: Hiring Smart

Hiring smart begins with a solid understanding of your recruiting process. An effective repeatable recruitment process can impact the organization in many ways such as decrease the number of days to fill a position thus improving employee productivity, decrease your cost per hire as well as help increase the quality of people you bring on board.

The typical recruitment process has five steps which are requisition, sourcing, screening, interviewing, and selecting.

Requisition
The requisition step begins the process. The hiring manager identifies a hiring need. Within most companies, the hiring manger is responsible for filling the position. However, based on our research, we found that the most effective recruitment processes employ help from human resources, internal recruiting or preferred recruitment partners to post, source and screen qualified candidates. This will dramatically improve your recruitment efficiencies as well as allow the hiring manager to focus more on the business at hand.

The hiring manager needs to fully understand the type of person they need. I recommend developing a detailed Position Description and Specification. In short, a Position Description should specifically communicate the position's role and responsibilities including the tasks, activities and expected results of the position. The Position Specification is also a detailed document that should communicate the skills, knowledge, education, experience, personality and cultural fit of the desired candidate. This step is the most critical step in hiring smart because it can help increase the quality of new hires, increase the speed to find qualified candidates, as well as help the organization with performance reviews, career development as well as strategic staffing plans.

“Based on our research, we found that for each hour a hiring manager spends planning for a new hiring prior to sourcing, the speed to fill the position increases by 8 days.”

Sourcing
Once you have developed the description and specification, the next step is sourcing for the position. At this point the hiring manager should work with internal recruiters to develop a sourcing strategy. Sourcing typically takes the majority of the time to fill new positions. I recommend developing a sourcing strategy that includes a preferred recruitment vendor list which is comprised of the recruitment agencies that best match your organization's industry, personality, geographic preference and position understanding. In addition, work with the internal recruiter to develop additional candidate sources such as a referral program, internet job boards, industry associations, professional networking groups, career fairs, and media sources. Once you begin to receive resumes, the next step is to effectively screen each resume to identify the qualified resumes.

Screening
The screening step involves reviewing resumes, and conducting telephone screening interviews to identify qualified candidates. The role of an internal recruiter or recruitment partner is to use the detailed position description and specification to screen for specific criteria:

• Personality and cultural fit
  
• Skills/knowledge
  
• Education and Experience

In addition, these criteria will be the specific area of focus that will form the foundation of all personal interviews including interview questions and evaluation criteria.

Interviewing
Once the recruiter has identified three qualified candidates, the next step is conducting face-to-face interviews. At this point the recruiter's role will be to plan the logistics for the interview team, develop and provide the behavioral and legal interview questions for each area of focus (personality and cultural fit, skills/knowledge, and education and experience) as well as provide to the hiring manager an overview of the candidate's qualifications based on the position description and specification including the candidate's resume.

The interview team should be comprised of three people, each of which will focus on one aspect of the position criteria. For example, the hiring manager should interview the candidate for personality and cultural fit as we found this to be the most important aspect of a new hire. The experience and education criteria should include someone who has the experience required for the specific position. The skills and knowledge criteria should be interviewed by an internal customer for the position.

For example, if the position is a sales support role, a sales person who will be supported should be the interviewer.

Selecting
The final step of hiring smart is the selection step. This step will involve the entire three person interview team as well as the recruiter who should facilitate the meeting. The recruiter should have each interviewer provide their evaluation of each candidate based on their specific criteria and questions asked. In addition, the interview team should provide written notes from the interview to assure consistency. This step is critical to hiring smart. It will protect the organization from legal issues by using specific consistent criteria to evaluate each candidate. In addition, it will remove the typical “Gut Feel” from the interview process and allow the interviewer to focus on the criteria outlined earlier. Finally, it will provide the recruiter with constructive feedback improving their understanding of your expectations for the role.

Hiring Smart can help your organization increase productivity, increase the quality of new hires, increase the speed to fill positions as well as decrease cost per hire, and decrease internal turnover. Finally, hiring smart will save the company hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in time and effort for the entire organization. Good luck!