Hiring and Interviewing

Hiring and Interviewing Best Practices

Hiring the right person that fits the job is very important for organizational success. The ‘cost’ of hiring the wrong person can have negative impacts such as:

• Loss of ‘time’ for the organization – the ‘time’ - invested in hiring, sorting out whether it is working and replacing a poor personnel choice.
• A poor choice in hiring means the organization is investing time, training and resources in the wrong person.
• Damage to or setbacks for the organization – the new hire does not correctly deal with customers, suppliers or product/service quality is damaged.
• Morale can be undercut. Employees usually sense quickly if a team member does not fit or is not doing his/her share.
• It is never easy or quick to rectify a poor hiring choice, especially if the person has to be let go. No one fires an employee lightly, which means a time consuming path forward.

Hiring Best Practices

Do your homework before the interview:

• Create a job description for the position.
• If there are multiple people involved in the hiring make sure there is consensus on the job description.
• Know what questions are illegal to ask in the hiring process. There are federal laws that cover hiring in all states and cities. But, additionally there are state and local laws that may go beyond the federal laws (Title 7). (The problem with illegal questions primarily comes from a person who is not hired and files a legal action over the illegal questions” that led them to being turned down for the job) FOOTNOTE?

Interview:

• Use a standard set of questions for all candidates. Treating all candidates consistently is both fair, legal and provides a balanced assessment of all candidates.
• Use “open-ended” questions to elicit better information. Examples:
  • “Tell me about your best/worst boss”
  • “Tell me about a time when you had to deal with an unhappy customer.” (Modify this question to a situation that is relevant to the specific position in the organization.)

The purpose of open-ended questions is to have the interviewee talk more honestly and openly instead of “selling themselves” or telling the interviewer what they want to hear. Closed-ended questions that can be answered by a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ provide little information to discern which person is the best fit for the position. Example of these type of closed-ended questions are:

• • Do you work well with your co-workers?
  • Are you a team player?
• Have multiple people in the organization conduct interviews. Multiple interviews increase the accuracy of the assessment of each candidate.

Hiring Best Practices Beyond Interviewing:

1. Numbered list item

Know your work environment – this adds more specific criteria to the job description that are specifically relevant to the organization

1. Screen candidates for:

• Qualifications -
• Ability – hard skills such as computer program knowledge, equipment operations or writing skills as demonstrated by specific authored documents.
• Fit – emotional/emotional intelligence abilities; people skills; intuitive abilities such as judgment

These screening elements should be evaluated when creating the job description to clarify the priority of these elements. No candidate will be equally strong in all areas.

1. Use background and credit checks allowable under law. These services can be contracted through a service agency. This may be important for positions that handle cash, financial or personnel records and sensitive matters.

1. Drug testing.

1. Aptitude and skill testing. Examples of aptitude and skills tests that organizations utilize are:

• • Senior accountant position – excel testing – companies provide these package
  • Sales – aptitude & personality – DISC Assessment - Dominance (D), Inducement (I), Submission (S), and Compliance (C)
  • A Fortune 1000 employer services company uses a math test – 12 minutes – 50 questions – 8th grade level

(There are a great variety of tests available)

What goes wrong in hiring:

• Asking illegal and inappropriate questions resulting in a legal action
• Asking closed-in questions which results in basic facts, but nothing deeper and hiring a person that does not fit the position and or organization.
• Lack of a background check fails to uncover critical information.
• Making a “gut decision” or quick decision results in short circuiting the process and a poor decision. Several situations where this can happen are:
  • A candidate comes recommended by a trustworthy person
  • Candidate is a “good interviewer” – Some people are very good at selling themselves and likeable which may mask whether they are qualified or the right fit for the position.
  • Fear of losing a candidate overtakes the hiring process