| Tips
on Recruiting, Screening, Interviewing, Testing & Reference
Checks |
Time is the most critical factor in hiring today. Spend too long on
your hiring process, and you'll lose top candidates. Spend too little
time, and you may make the most costly mistake of all-a bad hire.
The secret is to spend enough time, while using the proper tools,
to make the right fit between the candidate and the company. This
article highlights the benefits of improving your hiring process,
and gives you an assortment of tools to help you make your hiring
decisions. Once you've set up a process to recruit, assess, and interview
potential job candidates, you can guarantee your hiring success.
In today's tight
labor market, just finding the right people to interview can be a
major challenge. You should seek every opportunity to locate potential
applicants. While print advertising has remained the primary recruiting
medium for most organizations, an analysis of costs have led many
companies to seek additional methods. The following practices are
some of the most popular, and effective, recruiting methods companies
are using today.
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Recruit
applicants even when you're not hiring.
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Develop
a contact database of people you're interested in.
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Partner
with a skilled staffing service to recruit for you.
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Redesign
jobs to take advantage of available talent.
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Encourage
referrals-make your company the best place to work.
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Use
temp-to-hire options with a staffing service to "test out"
before you commit to hiring.
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Go global:
can your work be done by someone across town, across the country,
or across the world?
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Use
on-line career fairs to gain exposure to more applicants.
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Post
job openings on your company's web site.
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Fill-in
with temporary clerical, technical, professional, or executive
staff while you look.
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Recruiting is a sales job-why would a top quality applicant buy your
firm? Once you answer this question, you'll be better prepared to
face the challenges involved in finding good candidates.
Creative Recruiting Strategies-
Michael Pehl, CEO of i-Cube, takes out billboards touting his
company as "An Incredible Place to Work." He also relies on unusual
referral bonuses like a 32-inch television, a year's worth of housekeeping
services, and even a new Jeep Wrangler for employees referring 8 candidates
in a year!
Linda Blaser, a contract recruiter for Exchange Applications, gives
a $2,500 bonus to anyone referring a candidate-customers, vendors,
even strangers!
Once you've selected the people you want to interview, the real challenge
begins. Interviewing should be thought of as a process. Take your
time getting to know the candidate-through screening, interviewing,
testing, and reference checking. Your goal is to get an understanding
of a person's behavior-and the more chances you have to learn about
the person, the more likely you are to get a true sense of their personality,
ability, and behavior.
Test
For Commitment (How much does a candidate want to work for you?)-
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Ask
them to visit your workplace before the interview. Let them
know you'll be asking for their observations,
and recommendations for improvement. The more seriously they
take this assignment, the more they
are committed to working for you.
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Ask
them to fill out an in-depth employment application. Test
them on whatever skills are necessary
for the job-business writing, customer service, or data analysis.
If you can tell they put a lot of
effort into filling out the application, you'll get an idea
of how committed they'll be once you
hire them.
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Once you've found a way to locate applicants,
you need to screen resumes to make sure you interview the right candidates
for your open positions. How many good people have you passed over
because nothing on their resume caught your eye? Unfortunately, the
answer is you'll never know-unless you catch them working for your
competition because they saw potential where you didn't! Use the following
techniques to improve your screening process.
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Work
in teams to gain more insight into a candidate's strengths
and weaknesses.
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Use
a resume scoring system to compare candidates.
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Telephone
pre-screen- don't rely solely on resumes.
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Dr. Pierre Mornell, author of Hiring Smart, states three basic assumptions
about interviewing: 1. Interviews test how well someone interviews;
2. A good con artist can fool you every time; and 3. Interviews in
which you induce stress seldom work. Additionally, he offers a few
strategies to improve your interviewing technique.
First, he suggests asking a series of initial questions at once, then
allowing the candidate to answer them all. The reason is, it forces
you to listen, and it relaxes you. Once you know your part is over
for a while, you can focus on the candidate's answers more intently.
He also suggests you announce when the interview will end-by saying
something like, "we've got five more minutes." This usually prompts
the candidate to say the most important thing about him or herself-Mornell
calls these "last minute revelations."
Finally, Mornell suggests throwing in a curveball at the end of the
interview by doing something unexpected. He often walks people to
their cars. He observes the make, model, interior, or anything else
which shows something about the candidate's personal side. One candidate
he did this with had left his wife in the car-for the whole two hour
interview. This action spoke volumes to Mornell, who did not recommend
the candidate for a position. The company hired him anyway, only to
have to let him go less than a year later because of his poor relationships
with female coworkers.
Dr. Peter Mornell's Estimated Cost of a Bad Hire-
"If you make a mistake in hiring, and you recognize and rectify
the mistake within six months, the cost of replacing the employee
is two and a half times the person's annual salary. Put another way,
hiring the wrong person earning $40,000 will cost your company $100,000…and
that doesn't include the emotional costs."
Confessions from CEOs Who've Made Hiring Mistakes-
"My bad hire was the
third choice after two others were not hired. I compromised because
the search was taking inordinately long. Now I know that no hire is
better than a bad hire."
My hiring compromise "cost me the company."
Beyond the interview,
if you want to gain a better understanding of a candidate's personality,
ability, and/or skills, you should test him or her. In the 1950's,
testing was all the rage. But, with Civil Rights legislation of the
60's, and affirmative action programs of the 70's, testing fell out
of favor. However, it is once again gaining popularity as companies
realize they can reduce turnover costs by hiring right the first time-which
makes testing for fit an important tool in the hiring process.
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Personality
tests give you an idea of a candidate's inherent behavioral
traits.
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Skills
and ability tests are an excellent way to determine how well
the applicant will perform on the
job.
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After you've
screened, interviewed, and tested, you need to check references of
the people you would consider hiring. This is the key to determining
a person's past performance. And remember, the past is a very good
indicator of the future. You're looking for a pattern of behavior.
Use the following tips to find out how well a candidate performed
for previous employers, and whether weaknesses you've uncovered in
the interviewing process are accurate.
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Ask
the candidate what you will hear. You'll give the candidate
the opportunity to tell you his or
her side of the story if they expect to get a less than glowing
recommendation from a past employer.
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Call
references at times when you can leave a voice mail message.
Leave a message stating
that you're calling for a reference, and ask to be called
back only if the candidate was outstanding.
If you don't hear back from most of the people you call, you'll
get the message loud and clear. The
main benefit is you don't have to worry about the legal issues
associated with employers afraid to
give out poor references.
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Ask
references for a reference. Often, one person removed from
the given reference will provide the
best information.
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The way to guarantee your hiring success is to hire right in the first
place-and that takes time. To save time, and help guarantee your success,
consider working with a staffing service. A staffing partner can take
care of recruiting, screening, preliminary interviewing, testing,
and/or reference checking. Spend your time wisely. Concentrate on
getting to know the candidate-including past performance, personality,
and skills. You'll be better equipped to make the right decision.
The more attention you pay to your hiring process, the better results
you'll get, because nothing benefits a business more than having the
right people working there.
Sources: "No Room for Compromise." Mornell, Dr. Peter. Inc. Magazine,
August 1998, page 116 "Recruiting Secrets of the Smartest Companies
Around." Caggiano, Christopher. Inc. Magazine, October 1998, page
30 "Psycho Path." Caggiano, Christopher. Inc. Magazine, July 1998,
page 76 "Zero Defect Hiring." Mornell, Dr. Peter. Inc. Magazine, March
1998, page 74
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