Hiring Mistake #1 – Making the Interview Process Too Difficult

Every leader knows that hiring top talent is a critical ingredient for success.  Most also know from experience that hiring talent that fits is a 50/50 proposition.  In order to “get it right,” how many interviewing tests do you expect your interviewees to endure? Certainly not the egg race in the cartoon above. 

Because we advocate the critical importance of hiring “right,” we would never recommend less than a thorough evaluation of potential candidates. But, take a close look at the interview hurdles you expect them to leap and make sure that they matter in terms of measuring how well they will do on the job and in your organizational culture. With all the competition for “A” players, you don’t want to wear out your top candidates by subjecting them to unnecessary and unproductive screening that tells you little about their ability to succeed.

The interviewing process has grown lengthier in recent years…by quite a bit. Glassdoor, the online job and recruiting site, has published a research report that says “the average overall job interview process takes 22.9 days in the U.S.” And, of course, it can take much longer according to the job level and title. Think back to the last time you interviewed for a job. It can be agonizing to wait for the decision to be made. Try to expedite the process so you don’t lose the candidate you want; and make sure that you do not antagonize the candidate you don’t intend to hire but don’t yet want to let go. 

Depending upon your organization’s interviewing process and the law, there may be screenings that are unavoidable, such as drug tests, skill tests and background checks. Then, of course, there will be a series of behavior-based interviews by phone or video and, ultimately, in person. The further down the path the candidate proceeds, the closer they get to the offer. 

Make sure that each step in the interview counts. Do this by designing and implementing interviewing skills training that teaches your hiring managers and interviewers how to focus on the behavior-based competencies and attitudes that are necessary for success. They need to know what to look for and how to dig beneath the surface to get real answers. All interviewees should, of course, be treated with respect and courtesy. Put them through paces that will inform you as to their suitability for the job, the team and your organizational culture. But don’t unnecessarily lengthen the process. Get organized with schedules. Marshall your forces and assemble your team. A well-oiled interviewing process will result in a top-notch selection and a candidate who is excited about joining your firm.

Learn more at: http://www.lsaglobal.com/behavior-based-interviewing-training/

Where to Look if Your Hiring is Falling Short

It’s sad. Most companies really struggle to recruit and hire the top talent they want and need to thrive. Hiring is a process that is critical to success; yet few organizations are really good at it. 

Of course, your hiring team should be well versed in interviewing skills training so they have a consistent process to follow and an effective rating system that focuses on the specific behavior-based competencies needed for the specific job and your organizational culture. But beyond preparing your interviewers well, how good are you at the other important components in the hiring process from sourcing to screening to making the offer? Do you know? If not, you should. You should have a system in place so you can evaluate where your hiring process is successful and where it needs bolstering. 

Here are ways some recruiting experts suggest you assess your success:

1. Take a close look at your overall hiring process.
Define the key stages from attracting to hiring. Make sure that you have a good idea about how many candidates on average you will need to source, screen and interview to hit your hiring forecast.  Then plan and allocate resources accordingly.  And please be smart about how many interviews you subject a candidate to.  Our research tells us that you only need four people to interview a candidate to understand if they have the behavioral competencies needed to succeed.  Anyone else you add to the mix is for team buy-in.   Unfortunately, some companies have 10 or more interviews and turn off great candidates before they can get them on board.

2. Take a close look at your candidate sourcing channels. 
You want to ensure that you have an active and robust pipeline of potential employees who may fit. Know where your best candidates come from and keep in touch. 

Referrals are probably the most favored route because they come with recommendations from people who know them and who know the company. Be sure you actively promote referrals by asking employees frequently to review their network for likely talent and by rewarding them when a referral hire is made. Other helpful sourcing channels include social media, internet job marketplaces, and hiring agencies (especially good for identifying qualified candidates for senior positions).  Just make sure your job descriptions are accurate, compelling and reflect your true corporate culture.  You do not want to fill your candidate pipeline with unqualified talent.

3. Take a good look at your candidate screening process. 
Capture all the information you can about each candidate so you can track them at each point in the hiring process. Use validated assessment tools and time-tested behavioral interviewing techniques to qualify potential new hires.

Remember that, with each candidate interaction, you have a chance to learn more about their potential fit while selling the benefits of the job and leaving a good impression. Regardless of whether or not the candidate is hired, be sure that you represent your organization professionally. Who knows where the candidate will end up and who they will talk to next?

4. Take a close look at the final interview stage. 
Make sure your interviewing team is fully prepared to effectively and accurately assess the behavioral competencies that the job demands.  Ensure that you can rate short- and long-term fit in terms of the job, the team, their potential new boss and the overall corporate culture.

Breaking the hiring and interviewing process down into key stages allows you to evaluate each step and improve where you may be falling short. 

Learn more at: http://www.lsaglobal.com/behavior-based-interviewing-training/

3 Serious and Avoidable Interviewing Mistakes

Don’t you wish you could examine each job candidate as carefully as the man above with a magnifying glass? Those of us who are in the business of interviewing skills training understand all too well the importance of attracting and hiring high performing talent. The consequences of bad hires haunt a company and their hiring managers for months afterward. Either the poor hire stays and poisons others on the team or they leave and the vacuum is costly in terms of lost productivity and the time needed to re-fill and train for the open slot. 

Interviewing well is challenging but it is critical. Here are 3 mistakes that you can avoid with just a bit of discipline:

1. Rushing it.
Resist pressure from the anxious hiring manager who is struggling to reach targets and meet deadlines without a key worker or from the CEO who is naturally impatient and doesn’t fully appreciate how long the hiring process can take. If you are ultimately responsible for the hire, you could pay the price for hiring too quickly and making a bad choice. Stick to your guns; do it right; and cite, for those in a hurry, a few instances of poor hires and the misery they caused.

2. Not following a structured interviewing process.
Make sure that everyone on the hiring team takes the time to prepare and knows what they are to look for. For each job, identify the key performance indicators for success. Divvy up behavioral, motivational and intellectual competencies so the individuals on the team know which areas they should focus on. Each should be well schooled in behavioral interviewing so they can dig beneath the surface to better predict actual on-the-job behavior.

3. Letting bias fool you. 
Use an agreed-upon interviewing score card so you have a quantifiable measure of the criteria, either met or not met, that you set out at the beginning. Bias can creep in so easily. It’s just human nature to hire someone just like you or to make a snap judgment that determines your vote. And beyond the human tendency for bias, you need to make sure your interviews are strictly legal. Any hint of unfair hiring practices could put your company at legal risk.

Learn more at: http://www.lsaglobal.com/behavior-based-interviewing-training/

What Does It Take to Interview and Find Just the Right New Hire?

The hiring process can be tedious, time consuming and ineffective…both for the candidates and for the interviewers. But hiring right is well worth your investment. Just consider the wasted time and resources when you hire poorly and you’re faced with recruiting, interviewing, onboarding and training all over again!

The objective of interviewing should be to make job offers only to candidates who are a strong match for the open job, the potential career path and the corporate culture.

Follow these basic steps from proven interviewing skills training, one-by-one, to be sure you hire the best talent for your business strategy and the best attitude for your organizational culture.

Here is our recommended hiring and interviewing process based upon over two decades of experience:

1. Define the ideal candidate in terms of behavioral competencies, personality and potential.
2. Screen applicant resumes and sift through for only those candidates who fit the profile on paper.
3. Interview those candidates on the phone (and 80 to 90% will likely be crossed off your list).
4. Put the remaining 10 to 20% through assessments for the specific must-have skills that matter most.
5. Spend a full half-day with the top 5% who survive in interviews with a representative mix of co-workers, managers and executives depending upon their potential role.
6. Compare notes from the various interviewing groups to find out what they liked and what concerns remain.

Not done yet.

1. Schedule follow-up interviews with each candidate by two company employees (one of whom focuses on body language only for non-verbal clues to their true attitudes).
2. Conduct exhaustive reference checks.
3. Schedule the few who make it this far to come to work for an onsite “scenario test” day.

If they pass this last hurdle, they get the prize…a job offer.

If this seems like too lengthy of an interview process, think about some recent research from Glassdoor by Dr. Andrew Chamberlain and Ayal Chen-Zion in the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, Germany and France.  They found that more challenging job interviews correlate to higher employee satisfaction across all six countries.  According to their data, the optimal interview difficulty to achieve the highest employee satisfaction is 4 out of 5 on a five-point scale.

So, before you remove rigor from your interviewing process, make sure that the process is difficult enough to adequately determine the level of “employee/employer match” without going overboard.

Learn more at: http://www.lsaglobal.com/behavior-based-interviewing-training/

A Better Way to Select Talent that Fits the Job and Your Unique Organizational Culture

Does it sometimes seem as if the hiring committee is just throwing darts at a board to make their final selection? A stab in the dark is just that…a gamble that you have chosen someone who will fit the job and fit the culture. But hiring mistakes can be costly indeed. Take off the blindfolds and take a far closer and more discriminating look at your job candidates. 

One tip that comes directly from interviewing skills training is to consider the current top talent at your organization. Think of the highest performers at all levels of the company from the mail room to the executive suite and then find answers to these key questions:

• What vital few traits matter most?  Define the three or four distinguishing traits that all your superstars share. This tells you what traits you want more of because people with those differentiated characteristics thrive.  To challenge which qualities are most important, reflect to see if anyone with all of those competencies has ever failed to succeed.  This will help you understand what matters most and perhaps identify other traits that are critical for success. 

• Do you consistently recognize and reward those traits?  If you do – great.  That means you have strong alignment between the values that work and the values you reward.   If you do not, you need to understand why.  Perhaps you are missing an opportunity to encourage the behaviors you want.  Maybe you are fooling yourself about what really matters most.  For example, some companies say they believe that “people are their greatest asset,” but they really care about making as much profit as possible on the backs of their employees.  

High performing companies hire talent that aligns with what makes their best people successful and go out of their way to reward the behaviors that matter most.  Do the same and the odds are in your favor that you will hire well and for the long-term.

Learn more at: http://www.lsaglobal.com/behavior-based-interviewing-training/

Interviewing Skills - 3 Questions to Help You Look Beyond the Resume

When you are interviewing for a new manager, you need to learn not as much about a candidate’s technical skills as you do about their people skills. However, their ability to understand, support, communicate with, and manage people is not clear or obvious from a typical listing of what roles they played when and where.

Here are 3 questions that can help you dig beneath the facts of a resume to unearth answers that will give solid clues as to how your candidate might behave as a new manager on the job.

1. To determine if they know how to give feedback and handle difficult situations, ask them to describe a time when an employee’s performance was below par and how they responded. Follow up to ask if they would handle the problem differently in retrospect and how long the performance was below par and why.
   
2. To determine if they truly care about an employee’s development, ask if they would share a few examples of how they supported former team members in achieving career goals. Then follow up to ask if they would refer you to one of these employees so you could learn first-hand about their experience. 
   
3. To determine if they know how to show their appreciation for a job well done, ask about how they have rewarded employees in the past. You want to learn not only that they value individual contributions but also that they know their team members well enough to give rewards that are personally meaningful.  Then follow up to ask if they would refer you to one of these employees so you could learn first-hand about their experience.

Learn more at: http://www.lsaglobal.com/behavior-based-interviewing-training/

Hiring? What to Look For in a New Leader

What sets a leader apart from the rest of the population? This is what you must determine if you are in charge of finding one. 

Interviewing skills training will tell you that your first step in the process of hiring for any position you are trying to fill is to be clear about what specific qualities, attitudes, and skills are needed for success for your unique strategy, organizational culture and job. The only difference in selecting a leader is that the stakes are higher. A poor selection could lead an entire organization in the wrong direction.

Here, from our two decades of experience in working with leaders in various industries and companies large and small, is our short list of behavior-based competencies you should look for:

• Excellent communication skills to both marshal and inspire the troops
• A positive outlook and the ability to remain calm and focused when the going gets tough
• A presence and self-confidence that commands attention and respect
• An understanding of what it takes to work on and with a team
• A big picture, strategic approach
• A willingness to accept feedback, pro or con, with the goal of continuous learning and improvement

Your task is difficult but there are leaders out there…you just need to find them.

Learn more at: http://www.lsaglobal.com/behavior-based-interviewing-training/