Benefiting from Our Own Advice

We recently hired a new leader in our company and are extremely pleased with the result. I’ve just started the process over again for an administrative position and expect to be just as pleased, because the process we use helps us efficiently separate the wheat from the chaff and quickly arrive at a choice between two or three highly qualified candidates. Our internal hiring process compares to the chaotic methods with which many of our customers struggle before turning to a disciplined and focused way. 

As talent management experts, you might expect we’d take the view that hiring the right people is critical to our firm’s success. And that’s why we take our own advice when it comes to the hiring process.

First, before making a hire, we clearly define the job we’re looking to fill. This means understanding how the job contributes to our overall strategy and goals, and articulating the activities and tasks required to make those contributions. We then define the knowledge, skills and abilities necessary to conduct the tasks and activities. Importantly, we have also defined our company’s values and the requisite personality characteristics for anyone who is to work for our firm. For example, personal responsibility and a positive spirit are just two of the characteristics we require of our Teammates, and we assess that in the hiring process.  

Once we’ve posted the job, we require every candidate to complete an application and a series of job-specific assessments that predict the KSAs and other characteristics required of the job. I cannot emphasize enough the importance and effectiveness of this process! I posted a job on Friday and when I checked out the Hiring Tracker site from home on Sunday, I saw that about 60 people had applied for the position. I could also see that only a subset of applicants had committed the time to complete the online pre-hire assessments, and fewer still had passed the assessments. When I came in Monday morning, I was able to quickly scan 11 pre-qualified resumes and select four candidates to interview.

After a phone interview narrowed our choices to two finalists, we brought them in for two panel interviews which were conducted by an assortment of our Teammates. The fact that anyone in the firm can conduct the interview with little training means that everyone has a say in who joins our team. And that kind of empowerment with objective criteria assures that we’re not only choosing to make quality hires, but we’re ensuring new hires are going to enter a welcoming and supportive environment where they can flourish.