HIRING

Hire slow and fire fast is an old adage that has proven to be valuable advice for untrained hiring managers. Yet psychologists often suggest that it’s human nature to make a decision whether to hire someone within the first ten minutes of the interview. The rest of the time is spent validating the interviewer’s decision.

What’s the best way to prevent hiring managers from succumbing to this paradox?

Use a defined hiring process for preparing, sourcing, interviewing, and selecting talent. A well designed hiring process eliminates many of the common hiring pitfalls encountered by small to mid-size companies:

• Putting mediocre employees in charge of hiring
• Allowing personal biases to impact decisions
• Jumping to conclusions
• Misinterpreting resume facts
• Talking too much and not getting answers to key questions
• Not checking past history and references
• Ignoring patterns of behavior
• Telegraphing answers to your questions
• Getting schmoozed by an intoxicating candidate’s personality, résumé, and references

The largest cost on many company P&L statements is the cost affiliated with their inability to identify and hire the right people for the right position. The problem is that it’s hidden – spread out amongst revenue, costs of goods, and higher-than-necessary expense line items, like benefits and payroll.

It takes a sharp and seasoned professional to recognize talent, but it doesn’t have to be that way if you use the right hiring tools and methods.

The most complete hiring processes involve twelve essential steps for successful preparation, sourcing, interviewing, selecting, and on-boarding personnel. Proper hiring is essential for companies building a strong culture, and it’s an essential practice for any CEO focused on building a strong company.

Eliminating hiring mistakes enables you to:
Save time by avoiding sourcing applicants in the wrong places and interviewing countless numbers of applicants who are neither qualified nor deserving of time and consideration.
Remove pressure associated with the sudden interruption and restarting of a hiring system that is designed to work continuously.
Improve margins by surpassing the average corporate hiring success rate of 58%, and potentially achieving a rate of 85-95% hiring success. Recent studies show that a hiring mistake occurs 42% of the time when a small to mid-size company hires a new employee, and each mistake costs in excess of four times the annual compensation of the terminated employee.

Hiring Concepts & Steps

Effective hiring isn’t an art; it’s a science. Use a defined hiring process to eliminate mistakes that inflate your expenses and may lower your top line.

Source the right candidates

• When searching for candidates, the “shotgun” approach of generating the most respondents is rarely the most effective. When the hiring manager or HR is flooded with resumes, it can cause an egregious waste of time and money. More is not always better. With a precisely targeted approach, you can get highly qualified candidates in the door to make the screening process faster.

Properly screen to determine which candidates to interview

• Some candidates look great on paper, but are not a good fit for the position and aren’t worth even an interview. Instead of simply interviewing the candidates who look best on paper, or interviewing everyone and relying on your hiring instincts, it’s important to properly screen candidates using predefined criteria and assessments so you need interview only the top candidates for the job.

Structure your interviews

• Psychologists suggest that it’s human nature is to make an unconscious decision as to whether you want to hire a candidate within the first ten minutes of an interview. The rest of the interview is spent looking for reasons to validate that decision. To combat human nature, use a structured interview process whereby ten different interviewers within your company are able to arrive at the same conclusion. This removes human bias and minimizes hiring mistakes.

Design an on-boarding plan for success

• You snagged your superstar, so what’s the best way to get them producing? Create a structured on-boarding plan that will enable the new employee to learn the job quickly and start producing return for the company. On-boarding plans aren’t solely to benefit employers, though. Top talent is always in demand, and you’ll send the wrong message to your talented new hire if you leave them to learn the job on their own terms, and you’ll risk losing your new rock star within the first 30 days.

What’s next?

It’s on to your operations, to improve your budgeting and forecasting and to get a stronger understanding of past performance and a clearer view of future performance.

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