Does your business have a hiring process? How has it worked for your business? What is working? What could be better? Tell me about it in the comment section at the bottom of the page. I would love to hear from you.
Video Transcript
00:00 – Opening
Hi, I’m Shelley Tobin and welcome to another episode of In Pursuit of Hire Knowledge. A show dedicated to helping you attract, hire, engage and retain the right people for your business. In this episode, we will be looking at the 5-step hiring process that I use with my clients. So, let’s get started.
00:31 – Slide 1 – Intro
When it comes time to hire, most businesses aren’t quite sure how to go about it. This is quite understandable since most businesses don’t do a lot of hiring. This means that most of them cobble together some sort of ad hoc process based on the collective knowledge of those involved. Understandably, this ad hoc process usually leaves these businesses with a lot of frustration, wasted time and money, and all too often doesn’t get them the right person for the job.
00:58 – Slide 2 – Intro
We are going to look at the 5-step process that I have used to hire for both myself and my clients during my 20+ years working in the recruitment industry. A process that I now teach to my clients. This process is not complicated, but it must be completed correctly if you are going to see the hiring results you need.
01:18 – Slide 3 – Preparation
The first step in our 5-step hiring process is Preparation. In my opinion, this is by far the most important step in the process, and unfortunately, the most missed step. The biggest problem that I have seen businesses suffer from during their failed hiring attempts is not REALLY understanding who they are looking for. Quite often, if three or four people are involved in the hiring process, each one of them will have a slightly different understanding of what is involved in the job and what is most important. The way to alleviate this issue is to create a detailed job description. The more detailed the better. This job description must include all tasks that need to be completed, the timeline for each task’s completion, who the position reports to for each of these tasks and the skills and experience required to successfully complete these tasks.
02:10 – Slide 4 – Preparation
Once this detailed job description is completed, everyone that will be involved in the hiring process must meet and determine the importance of each item to the success of the position. This should be classified as “must have” and “nice to have”. This will create a scorecard against which you will evaluate all your job candidates at each of the next three steps. This job description scorecard will save you a lot of time and ensure you don’t lose track of your most important requirements during the hiring process.
02:41 – Slide 5 – Preparation
Another great tool that you can use to help better understand who you are REALLY looking for, it to complete a job benchmarking assessment for the position. This job benchmarking assessment will help you to determine the behaviors, values, personal skills and task preferences required to excel in the position. These attributes can be very difficult to determine from resumes, interviews and reference checks alone even for veteran recruiters. Consider using this type of tool as part of your hiring process.
03:12 – Slide 6 – Recruitment
The second step in our 5-step process is Recruitment. One of the biggest questions that I get when I enter this step with my clients is “Where do we find good candidates?” The answer to this question really depends on the type of position you are trying to hire for. Typically, businesses post their job openings on their website, online job boards and in newspapers. Most don’t think about other options that are available these days such as social media channels like Facebook and LinkedIn, posting at local colleges and universities, posting at professional associations if relevant, participating in job fairs and contacting their network for referrals. All of these can work depending on the position, but some are better than others.
03:57 – Slide 7 – Recruitment
Once you have determined where you are going to post your position, its time to get out that detailed job description and scorecard you created. Draft your job ad, using these as your reference, to ensure that you make all the following very clear to anyone thinking of applying for the position:
- what skills and experience are “must have” and which are “nice to have”.
- what tasks are completed during a typical day.
- what the working environment is like.
- who the position will report to.
Including all this information is critical in attracting the right type of candidates and filtering out others. Taking time to write a clear, detailed and NOT generic job ad will save you many hours of reviewing resumes of people who are not qualified for the position
04:44 – Slide 8 – Recruitment
Now as people apply for the position, you can quickly evaluate them against the scorecard you created in step 1 to determine who will advance to the interview step.
04:55 – Slide 9 – Interviews
The third step in our 5-step hiring process is Interviewing. If you have a lot of job candidates that advanced to your interview stage, it is a good idea to begin by conducting a screening interview. This is usually done as a phone or video interview with the purpose of determining who has the most skill and experience in the “must have” areas of your job description scorecard. I typically like to reduce the total number down to no more than three to five candidates that will be interviewed in person.
05:26 – Side 10 – Interviews
The biggest problem that I see businesses suffer at this stage is not being properly prepared for the interviews. You must, must, must have your questions written out before the interview and you must, must, must document the job candidates answers during the interview. Once again, use your detailed job description to formulate your questions. If you don’t feel that you can take proper notes during the interview, ask another person to take notes and/or record the interview.
05:54 – Slide 11 – Interviews
The purpose of the interview is to learn as much as you can about not only the candidate’s fit with the job requirements but equally important, their fit with the working environment and the company culture. If an employee is going to become a long-term, high performing member of your team, they must have all three. This is very important so I will say it again. If an employee is going to become a long-term, high performing member of your team, they must be the right fit for the job requirements, the working environment, and the company culture.
06:28 – Slide 12 – Selection
The fourth step in our 5-step hiring process is Selection. Once you have completed your in-person interviews, you will need to evaluate all the information collected for each job candidate. This should include the resume with the completed scorecard, the screening interview notes with the completed scorecard (if completed), and the in-person interview notes with the completed scorecard. The goal for the first selection round is to determine who to consider for the position and in what order. So, if you interviewed five people, you might determine that two are not the right fit and then rank the other three as your first, second and third choices.
07:06 – Slide 13 – Selection
Next, you need to complete reference checks, security checks (if required) and any skills or behavioral assessments needed. It is rare that a job candidate’s references will say anything negative about them. So, use your reference checks as an opportunity to better understand the strengths they are known for and the past working environments and company cultures they have been exposed too. Skills assessments are great for confirming competency in any software that might be a “must have” to the job. It is really unfortunate to find out that your new hires interpretation of proficient with a certain type of software is not your interpretation of proficient.
07:46 – Slide 14 – Selection
I am a huge believer in the use of behavioral assessments to determine the candidates fit with the job requirements, working environment and the company culture. If you decided to complete a job benchmark as part of your hiring process, you can compare the two for some amazing insights into how this person matches up to those who succeed in the position. This helps greatly in removing your “gut feeling” from the selection process and instead makes it a data-driven decision that everyone involved can better agree on.
08:18 – Slide 15 – Selection
Now you are ready to make your second and final selection round. Review all the information once again and see if anything has changed since your first selection round. Did anything come up during the reference checks, the security checks or the assessments that changes your choices? Once your hiring team agrees on your top choice, you can create and send your offer letter. After you have a signed offer, I would suggest that you contact the other job candidates that made it to your in-person interviews. Be prepared to tell them why they did not get the job as this can help with their career development. You never know when you might be hiring for this type of position again or be in a position to refer one of them to a colleague.
09:02 – Slide 16 – Onboarding
The fifth and final step in the hiring process is Onboarding. Over my many, many years of recruitment and hiring experience, it saddens me to have seen so many amazing new hires get poorly onboarded; leading to their dissatisfaction with their new company. A dissatisfaction that all too many times leads to them leaving or getting fired for poor performance. A good onboarding program clearly maps out the first 90 days of a new hires career with the company. It includes time spent getting to truly understand the new position and how it is important to the success of the business. How can you expect a new hire to become a high performer if they don’t understand how their job is important to the success of the business? Make sure your new hire has mentor support during every part of their onboarding as well as, at a minimum, weekly performance evaluations with their supervisor to determine how they are progressing. Don’t drop the ball at this point leading to a complete waste of all of the time and expense that has gone into finding this new hire.
10:06 – Slide 17 – Wrap Up
So, there you have it. A 5-step hiring process your business can use to find the people it needs for success. Once again, these steps are:
- Step 1 – Preparation
- Step 2 – Recruitment
- Step 3 – Interviewing
- Step 4 – Selection
- Step 5 – Onboarding
If you follow these five steps as I have discussed. It will go a long way towards improving the success rate of your hiring process and success in hiring will ALWAYS lead to success in business.
10:41 – Closing
Thanks for joining me for this episode as we reviewed the 5-step hiring process I have used to help my businesses and my client’s businesses to find hiring success again and again. Make sure to check out the show notes for a full transcript as well as links to some additional resources. If you have any questions about today’s episode, you can contact me at [email protected] or leave a comment below. I promise to get back to you as soon as possible.
Finally, I would love for you to subscribe to my channel and join me for our next episode. Thanks again and have a wonderful day.
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