Your company wants to bring in the best people. And well-designed recruiting and hiring procedures can reduce bias, promote inclusivity and allow you to uncover those top performers. So, where should you start? Here are four key elements of a structured hiring process.
A Structured Hiring Process Requires…
Clearly Defined Roles
It’s hard to find the perfect employee if you can’t explain who the perfect employee is. Therefore, clearly defining roles shouldn’t be an afterthought, it should be a top priority. Rather than simply recycling an old job description, carefully consider what skills someone needs to succeed in a role. Talk to managers and employees within your organization to brainstorm ideas. Then, make a list. If this seems overwhelming, try using Scott Wintrip’s Hire-Right Profile. Wintrip breaks qualifications into four categories: Dealmakers, Dealbreakers, Boosts, and Blocks. Dealmakers and dealbreakers are absolutes. For instance, some jobs legally require a degree or certification. However, you also can identify wished-for qualities. These wouldn’t necessarily eliminate a candidate from consideration, but they could give them an edge over the competition.
Structured Interviews
Although unstructured interviews may seem less stressful for everyone involved, research shows they “provide low reliability and low validity.” (Medium, 2016) Rather than basing decisions on facts, hiring managers conducting unstructured interviews tend to fall prey to a host of biases. Examples include affinity bias, in which people tend to prefer those who remind them of themselves. Designing a process, which includes standardized questions and skills tests, helps you judge all applicants according to the same criteria.
Uniform Candidate Evaluations
Similarly, your interview packet should include standardized evaluation forms. You may choose to grade applicants on some universal skills such as communication and organization. Yet, the forms should be customized for the job description too. Members of the hiring team can submit their results for overall review. In fact, ATS and/or HR software will often compile this data allowing for an easy side-by-side comparison of candidates.
Long-Term Tracking
So, was your hiring process successful? Despite your best efforts, you always will have some fantastic and some subpar hires. Nevertheless, you can stack the odds in your favor. Hiring metrics allow you to measure the overall effectiveness of your program and improve your results. Let’s say you begin with a common metric – the quality of hire. After their first year, you pull new employee’s performance reviews. Using your ATS or HR software, you compare their on-the-job reviews to their interview performance. Do you notice any trends? Did high performers perform better in certain areas of the interview process than low performers? Analyzing this data could help you uncover important insights, thus improve your efforts.
Is Your Company Interested in Implementing a Structured Hiring Process?
The recruiting experts at BOS Staffing would be happy to assist you in building a better team in Atlanta, Georgia, and beyond. We can help you write better job descriptions, design an effective interview process and evaluate candidates objectively. Learn more about the advantages of partnering with BOS Staffing today!
