5 Keys to a Selective and Efficient Hiring Process
Tired of candidates who are just “tire kickers” and not truly serious about working for your organization?
Maybe you’re selling your jobs too hard.
Extremely low unemployment increases competition for talent among employers, which often results in a lot of hard selling to job candidates – even if they’re not ideal for the job. In fact, some hiring managers are so desperate for candidates that they’ll ignore huge red flags that scream “Don’t hire this person!”
During a true talent war, how can you hire the right person for the job?
Bruce Tulgan at RainMakerThinking has been examining the talent war since the mid-1990s, analyzing myriad data points from business leaders, managers and employees to understand the problem and answer this critical question:
What are the keys to successful hiring?
According to Tulgan, effective hiring starts with being very, VERY selective – even in a tight talent market. Otherwise, you run the risk of hiring the wrong person, who will be disappointed, underperform and eventually leave you high and dry.
In his recent whitepaper, “Winning the Talent War: Building a Winning Culture of Attraction, High-Performance & Retention,” Tulgan shares these five keys to a selective and efficient hiring process:
- Scare them away.
While it’s important to explain the upsides of your opportunity, it’s equally important to be honest about the downsides. If a job is tedious, is physically demanding or has a tough schedule, say so. It’s better to eliminate a “tire-kicker” at this stage than to invest time and effort interviewing and vetting them, only to have them turn you down at the offer stage. - Test them.
Further verify a candidate’s seriousness and gauge their aptitude for key skills with appropriate testing. Whether you use personality tests, general aptitude tests, work simulation tests or other options, make sure you can implement and evaluate assessments with relative speed. - Ask behavioral questions.
Behavioral interviews operate on the premise that understanding past behavior is the best way to predict future success. Ask questions that focus on job-related experiences, behaviors, skills and abilities, and then listen for answers that provide evidence for each. - Provide a realistic preview of the job.
In his whitepaper, Tulgan details several ways to show candidates what a job is really like, including: probationary hiring; realistic internships; job shadowing; creating documentation that thoroughly explains a job; and speaking with current employees. - Close the deal and stay in touch.
While you must be selective in hiring, you also must finish fast – otherwise, you risk losing great candidates to competitors. Once you’ve extended an offer, help your new employee actively transition into their job and integrate with their new team:- Maintain a high level of communication during the period between offer acceptance and their first day of work.
- Have key employees email the new hire to introduce themselves.
- Send actual assignments for your new employee to complete.
- Provide plenty of background material on your company.
Hire successfully – even in today’s talent war.
These takeaways barely scratch the surface of the insights contained in this whitepaper.Â
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