|
10.09
As the
economy recovers, more than ever, it’s important
to…Hire the Right Person the First Time
Tips
for improving your company’s interviewing
process
By Gary Perman
The high unemployment rate has
created a false confidence among company hiring
managers — from small business owners to Fortune
500 companies — because large pools of
applicants are available. When a hiring manager
posts a job opening on any Internet blog today,
he or she becomes inundated with hundreds of
resumes. Besides putting a strain on company
resources to process this applicant pool, hiring
managers develop a false sense of confidence,
thinking that their next star employee is
sitting within that pile of resumes. Sometimes
he or she is, but often times he or she is not.
Nevertheless, this false sense of confidence
causes interviewers to mentally relax and loosen
the interviewing structure. When hiring managers
fail to prepare themselves, they let their guard
down during interviews and the interview process
becomes inconsistent. This can result in hiring
the wrong person, which ultimately results in
retention failure — costing your company up to
five times the candidate’s salary to rehire.
Imagine that you hired a person at $100,000 per
year and you failed to retain that person, it
can cost up to $500,000 in lost production and
rehiring — not to mention the morale impression
left among your team. Rather than be fearful of
making a hiring mistake, here are some ways to
ensure you make a good, profitable hire the
first time.
Interviews are the most
commonly-used component of employee selection
and hiring. With 99 percent of all organizations
using hiring interviews, it follows that we
should all be excellent at conducting interviews
and making the right hiring decisions.
Unfortunately, that’s not often the case.
Many interviewers are rendered
ineffective because of the following issues:
·
Lack of training – Only 33 percent
of all interviewers are trained, so 66 percent
of interviewers are making critical, yet
unqualified, judgments.
·
Biases – Quick judgments and
general impressions interfere with the quality
and accuracy of assessing applicants.
·
Inconsistency – Lack of consistent
structure and process undermine the chance of
accurately determining the best candidate.
·
Inefficiency – Interviewers often
ask the wrong questions and use poor evaluation
techniques.
Too frequently hiring managers
allow high-stakes decisions to be made without
the proper quality assurance, and unfortunately
they have to live with those decisions for an
extended period at a high cost to the company.
Effective interviewing takes careful planning so
that hiring decisions are based on relevant and
sound information, not superficial cues, or
first impressions. Here are steps you can take
to establish an improved interviewing process:
·
Create structure for the
interview. Random processes produce random
results. To create structure, start by defining
the key requirements of the job in question.
Once you identify the job requirements, create
standard interview questions based on these
requirements. Use the same questions for all
applicants for that position. If there is more
than one interviewer, all questions should be
consistent and target the same job requirements.
Different interviewers sometimes have their own
“pet” questions. These should be eliminated as
part of the standard interview. Structure is
equally important for the evaluation and rating
process. Before conducting any interviews,
determine ideal/acceptable responses for each
question. This will increase objectivity and
improve the accuracy of your ratings. Structured
interviews produce better judgments.
·
Establish minimum standards for
non-verbal cues. Our judgment is influenced
by what we see. Non-verbal cues (body language,
posture, mannerisms and appearance) cause us to
perceive people more positively or negatively
depending on our interpretation. These cues can
be helpful in making a decision, but they are
also easy to manipulate and can be easily
misjudged. To avoid biases and personal
judgments, establish clear standards for
non-verbal cues that are reasonable for your
business culture, employee standards and
customer expectations. Once you have determined
that the applicant meets the minimum standards,
focus your attention on the substance of their
responses.
·
Acquire and convey information.
There are two major purposes for an interview:
to solicit and discern an applicant’s
qualifications; and provide information about
the job, organization and culture. The interview
needs to be managed to allow time for both
acquiring and conveying information. If a
multi-step selection process is used, then the
interview can be apportioned to complement the
entire process.
·
Manage interviewer consistency.
Not all interviewers are equally effective.
During the interview, some may ask questions and
acquire information better than others, and some
may present information better and be great
representatives for your company. Some
interviewers may be detail-oriented and
systematically process responses, while others
may apply global judgments to applicants. To
improve consistency, interviewers should avoid
giving opinions or impressions and instead
should cite specific statements and examples
from the interview to support ratings.
·
Judge applicants on
performance, not on promises or prior
experience. Applicants want to make the best
impression possible. They anticipate what you
want to see and hear. Their goal is to convince
you that they are the best person for the job.
They want to look good to you and will promise
that they can deliver, but promises and past
experience are no guarantee of future
performance. You can reduce the smokescreen by
asking questions that target actual
performance results. Ask applicants if
the results are their own, or team/workgroup
results. If the job lends itself to a work
sample, ask for one. Then follow up to confirm
performance results during reference checking.
·
Provide applicants with
information about your company. Applicants
leave an interview with their own impressions
and judgments. While you’re making a choice
about them, they’re making a choice about you,
the job and your company. Interviewers need to
provide information, yet only a limited amount
can be absorbed. It’s helpful to supplement the
interview with written or online information,
and more importantly, to provide for follow-up
questions to be answered. Offer information
about yourself, too, such as how long you have
been with the company and why you joined. Most
people don’t quit jobs, they quit their boss.
Thus, it is important you not only select a
candidate who has the skills and performance
record to succeed in the job, but one who will
fit within the culture and team - and will be
able to work with and for you.
·
DO NOT Automate your interview
process. People hire people. Software does
not hire people. Human resources people will
disagree with me on this issue. Why? It helps an
overwhelmed and understaffed department speed
through the process at the cost of quality.
Exceptional talent has been turned away from
companies that hire using interview process and
screening software. Like untrained interviewers,
this software is designed to weed people out,
not in. If you don’t have the “right” keywords
embedded within your resume, it is eliminated
from consideration. Some companies who use
software automation in the interview process are
convinced it improves consistency, increases
accuracy, remove biases, expands applicant flow,
lowers cost and eliminates the drudgery of
interviewing. At the same time, it includes
people in a “short list” that have no business
being on that list and who would have been
eliminated if an experienced, trained screener
had reviewed the resume.
·
There is no substitute for
well-trained interviewers. Your companies’
revenues and profits depend on the actions of
those interviewers. There are many candidates
that provide tremendous contributions to
company’s profits, patents and revenues, but
can’t write a persuasive resume to save their
lives. Yet with automation software, these
talented gems wouldn’t get past the software
program. Imagine how much revenue is lost at a
company just because a candidate wasn’t
interviewed.
By applying the above
principles, you can increase the efficiency,
accuracy and outcomes of the interview process.
You will be more likely to prevent costly hiring
mistakes and hire the right person the first
time.
Gary Perman is the chair of
the IEEE Oregon Technology Management Chapter.
He is a certified recruiting professional and
the president of PermanTech, which specializes
in working with executives of technology
companies helping them surface, evaluate and
hire critical staff including executives,
managers and engineers. He can be contacted at
gary@permantech.com
www.technicaheadhunter.com
Comments may be submitted to
todaysengineer@ieee.org.
Opinions expressed are the
author's.
|
