Five Things Hiring Managers Can Do to See and Hire Stronger People

Five Things Hiring Managers Can Do to See and Hire Stronger People

Reblogged from LinkedIn

By: Lou Adler

Being a great manager starts by hiring great people, and hiring great people starts by understanding how they make career decisions.

While using the Performance-based Interview and Talent Scorecard will dramatically increase assessment accuracy, it really won’t matter if hiring managers aren’t seeing enough good people to begin with. In this case, they’ll just be more confident they’re not hiring the right person.

For most people, the interview is just an assessment tool, not a recruiting tool. In order for it to be both there are a number of things a hiring manager can do to improve the quality of people seen, interviewed and hired. Here are my top five:

1. Clarify job expectations before you ever see anyone. A list of skills, duties and experience requirements is not a job description; it’s a person description. Few top people are excited when companies use these for advertising purposes. Instead, define what the person in the role needs to do to be successful, tie this to the company strategy or important project, and describe why people already doing this role find it appealing. Here’s a sample posting for a Controller that covers it all. I call documents defining the top 4-5 performance objectives required for on the job successperformance-based job descriptions. (FYI, this step is number one of Gallup’s Q12 of factors that drive employee performance and job satisfaction.)
2. Treat your recruiter as a trusted partner. When a recruiter doesn’t understand real job needs he or she converts to a transactional sales approach focusing on box-checking skills. This is an instant turn-off to anyone competent. Recruiting top people involves a consultative sales process that starts with a full understanding of real job needs. On top of this add a strategic approach to sourcing and networking that enables the recruiter to uncover the best people in short order. Recruiters can make or break a hiring manager. This is why they should be treated as core members of the department and invited to every staff meeting.
3. Conduct an exploratory phone screen before ever conducting a face-to-face interview. I just read a small segment of a rather scholarly report by Dan Cable that investigated the impact of first impressions on the predictability of the interview. The key finding: there is a negative correlation! If you like someone you go into sales mode, and if you dislike someone you seek out their flaws. You can virtually eliminate this problem by conducting a performance-based exploratory phone screen before inviting a person in for an onsite interview. You’ll need to give the person… Read More