Savvy Hiring

Consider these 10 reasons for using using personality assessments in your candidate screening process.
 

1. The business needs a stronger workforce.
2. You want more meaningful interviews.
3. You've had a series of disappointing hires. 
4. You need help articulating the demands of the job.
5. You need help discerning what candidates can meet those demands.
6. Hiring is happening with little objectivity. 
7. You are overwhelmed with the time consumed in interviewing. 
8. Personality confliect is rampant among employees.
9. Departments/teams are not meeting performance objectives.
10.   Turnover is too high. 

Do any of these apply to your company? 

If so, reigster here for ADVISA’s next free webinar on Using Personality Assessments in Hiring on September 21^st at 9:30 EST. Or if you can’t wait, contact me and we’ll get started today. 

• What are unique aspects of this company? Are the unique aspects being highlighted? Are there any unique aspects that actually may be a barrier to reaching great candidates?
• What are the unique aspects of the position?  Are the unique aspects being highlighted?  Are there unique aspects that may be a barrier?
• What are the experiences, skills and behaviors needed in a top candidate?  Are we articulating those?
• What is the opportunity that the position and company are offering for their new hire?  Are we being clear about these opportunities?
• What would attract the perfect candidate to this position?  How is this presented?
• If there are possible "minefields" that might make a candidate nervous, are we addressing those? 

• The company is a tech company, but in the agriculture sector.  They need a data/tech person, not a farm person.  De-emphasize the agriculture element and emphasize the tech element. 
• Be clear that the ideal candidate doesn't need any experience in agriculture (the CEO didn't even come from ag). 
• Lots of candidates are nervous about job stability.  This company is led by someone with strong experience building successful divisions/companies and his current endeavor is receiving international attention.  Be specific about the demonstrable growth trajectory and real potential for this company. 
• The company is highly professional, but has a casual culture.  Use a conversational tone in the posting.

• Stop and think.  Doing the same thing (same posting, same job boards, same markets) will likely yield the same results.  If you want different results, you have to do something differently.  Give yourself permission to revisit what you have in place.
• Ask the important questions, such as those from the list above.
• Solicit input from others.  Engage the hiring manager, CEO and peers for the new hire in answering the questions.  You don't need a long meeting to do this - a short conversation or e-mail can get you some golden nuggets of info. 
• Look at your competition.  How are similar positions are being promoted by other companies?

• Aliah Wright wrote an article called "Millennials: Bathed to Bits" in the July 2010 edition of SHRM's HR Magazine in which he states, "Old style interviews are out.  Two way dialogues are the way to hire."  If you've not seen this article, be sure to check it out.  Great perspective on a new hire's first three months and a new paradigm for the employee lifecycle.
• Diane Spiegel's posting, "7 Questions You Wouldn't Expect During a Millennial Interview" aligns perfectly with Wright's article. The questions she presents are great examples of a candidate engaging the interviewer in a real dialogue.  Are you ready to answer these questions? 

At this point, we've all read or even experienced ourselves the open position that had 500 applicants.  With such enormous candidate pools and so many people looking for work (and even desperate for work), this means that employers have maximum control of the process, right.  Well, not really.




Even with lots of candidates out there..., 

• Candidates will have other opportunities (part 1) - If you drag out your candidate screening process over weeks and weeks, you are increasing the chances that candidates (even finalists) will move on to another opportunity.  The "hotter" the candidate, the more opportunity they'll have, even in this market. The company who can put them through their process quicker and offer an equal opportunity may beat you out.
• Candidates will have other opportunities (part 2) - The great candidate may also be one who is in pretty dire circumstances.  He/she may have to take the first offer they get of any work. 
• Candidates will get uncomfortable and withdraw - If your process drags on, candidates can start to think, "Jeez, even if they offer me a job, it doesn't seem like they're really that interested in me.  I'm not sure if I want to work somewhere where I'm not valued."  Even if a candidate doesn't officially withdraw, they'll just go silent.

Indeed, even with unemployment high, best hiring practices still hold true when it comes to working with candidates.  It's still critical to move through your hiring process expeditiously.  here are some thoughts to help with that. 

1. Set an 8 week deadline.  Commit to no more than 8 weeks between posting a position and making your final decision on a candidate (or to restrategize the search and start over). 
2. Make sure that internal stakeholders agree on the position and search parameters before you launch.  When there is internal dissention about the scope of a job, qualifications, compensation, etc., it drags out the hiring process because these matters are being worked through while candidates are being considered.  Figure out the position first, get everyone in agreement, then launch.
3.  Have the infrastructure in place to move through the process.  If you don't have the capacity to quickly process resumes and move candidates through quickly, consider engaging additional help.  (Note that our RPO service is perfect in these situations!)
4. Communicate to your candidates.  Be clear about your timeline for hiring and where they are in the process, especially if they're real contenders.
5. Keep the top candidates engaged. If the hiring manager just interviewed someone fabulous but is going on vacation before the final decision can be made, make sure that the candidate is contacted by the company in a meaningful way during that week.  It's not enough just to tell them that you'll be away - keep them connected.

• We marketed a sales rep position on Career Builder and LinkedIn.  Of the Career Builder applicants, 25% were initially qualified and 3% were deemed as being top candidates.  By comparison, 38% of candidates from LinkedIn were initially qualified and 11% were considered to be top candidates.
• Another client had a unique position that required a candidate to be experienced in sourcing and implementing lean manufacturing practices; fluent in Mandarin, English and preferably German as well; willing to locate to a city 90 minutes outside Shanghai for at least 2 years.  We marketed the position exclusively on LinkedIn and an astounding 69% of applicants initially met the diverse qualifications. 

1. Build a company page on LinkedIn that articulates what you do and, more importantly, what it's like to work for you (your employer brand).  Candidates are researching you!
2. On your company page, consider including quotes from employees that give insight into what it's like to work at your company.
3. Encourage employees to build their own LinkedIn profile and offer simple trainings on how to build a strong profile that helps your company with recruiting.
4. If you make public on LinkedIn the contact person who is the person posting the position, be sure that he/she has a profile that "sells" the company as an employer. 
5. Don't just post the job description, but create a job posting that captures what the position is about (just the highlights), what you're seeking and what the opportunity is.  The posting should encourage self-selection: it has language that attracts the right candidates.

Strong hiring is critical for company success. But I’ve found that great hiring is less about applicant screening and recruiting strategy and more about simply knowing what you need.
 

For example: You need someone to answer the phones, so you need a receptionist. But will he/she work with a 60-line phone system with 300 calls/day, or manage about 25 calls a day, but be expected to “triage” customers? These are two very different positions, and being clear about the needs of your position will guide the rest of the process. 

Here is a framework I find helpful for defining a job and capturing that in the format of a job description:

1.       Position Summary  (2-3 sentences) – Why does this position exist?  How is it critical to the company’s success?

2.       Responsibilities (3-5 broad areas with 3-12 detailed bullets in each) – What does a person in this role do? What are the 3-5 areas into which their responsibilities naturally fall? What will they be evaluated on?

3.       Core competencies (6-12) – How should this person perform their job so that they align with the company overall? What behaviors must one exhibit in order to fit into your company culture and meet your definition of professionalism? 

4.       Position specific competencies (3-6) –What traits must someone have in order to be successful in this specific role? HINT: Personality assessments like Predictive Index® can be very helpful for defining these. 

5.       Critical skills & knowledge (3-6) – What are the teachable skills or formal knowledge that one must have for this position? 

6.       Working conditions – How will this person work on a daily basis? How much travel and what kind of travel is involved? 

When you can clearly answer these questions, you’ve done half the work necessary for strong hiring. You can use the information from these question to guide where you post the position, how you screen resumes and how you interview candidates. 

I can't pass up an opportunity to reinforce the kudos my colleague Todd Gross offered to our ADVISA Hiring team today in his posting Best In Class Recruiters.   Our Hiring Partners Gina, Sally and Beth are truly exceptional at applying best hiring practices, smart recruiting strategy and savvy applicant screening to the searches we do on behalf of our clients.  Thanks, Todd, for recognizing our team and thanks to all of our team members for your great work every day. 

Learn more about our unique Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) work by clicking here or contacting me directly.  I'd love to explore how we can enhance your employee recruiting efforts.

In my Organizational Behavior class last Saturday (I'm slowly, but surely, working on my MBA), my professor uttered a line that I'll be quoting for years. 

"If you need a squirrel to climb the tree, hire the squirrel.  Don't hire the duck." 

Ding, ding, ding!!!! 

We were talking about the use of personality assessments, which is a niche of the professor - his work in a Fortune 500 company includes determining what assessments to use and managing their use, especially in hiring.  He gave very specific examples that quantified the impact of using a reliable and valid assessment in hiring.  Fascinating and meaningful, but the squirrel/duck analogy said it all.  Don't hire the duck.

There are several layers to why I found his summation so powerful.  These relate to previous posts I've done about best hiring practices. 

1. Know what you need.  In this case, a tree must be climbed.
2. Any personality assessments you use  should help you quantify and "package" the behaviors you need.  You need a squirrel.
3. Then the candidate assessment should help you see what you have in front of you.  You have a duck. 
4. Finally, you have to do the fit/gap analysis.  Can the duck climb the tree?

• Is your search attracting squirrels?  Do you need to do more to attract a squirrel (e.g., offer stronger compensation or add relocation)?
• Can you wait it out until a squirrel comes your way?
• You need a tree to be climbed because you need to get what's at the top.  Is there another way to get what's at the top?  What about a bird that can fly more than the duck? It's not a squirrel, but it'll get the job done.

• When you're engaging in social media (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook) make sure that your profile includes a link back to the Careers page of your company.  Not just your company, but your Careers page - make it easy for potential candidates to see what you have to offer!
• When you're deciding what social media to be a part of (more examples include MySpace, Four Square and Twitter), put aside your personal biases and think about where your likely candidates are - if you're recruiting employees, this is where you want to be, too!
• When you're creating your LinkedIn profile, be sure that people can find you using a keyword search.  This may mean adding a few words in parenthesis to your title in order to capture search attention.

My ADVISA colleague, Gina Bindley, wrote a blog posting earlier this week that really resonated with me.  It's called "The Puzzle Known as Hiring."  In it, she succinctly discusses the reality many people face: feeling overwhelmed with making a hire and doing effective applicant screening.  Her advice to take the hiring puzzle one piece at a time is quite prescient and - if I may add - a great reminder for other moments of the day as well.  Thanks, Gina!

This is one of my mom's favorite phrases.  "Don't get the cart before the horse," she'd say.  I think of this often because, admittedly, I'm inclined to do so.  Why?  I get busy, impatient, jumbled in my head, etc. and it just happens.

Recently, I saw this happening with a client who uses Predictive Index® as part of her company's applicant screening process.  Here is her process:

1. Review resumes
2. Conduct interviews
3. Review the pre-employment assessment that's done by Predictive Index.
4. Make the hire or put the candidate in the "thanks, but no thanks" pile.

Today I was reading an article about Zappos, an online shoe retailer that is recognized as one the top 100 companies to work for.  The Jan. 9, 2010 New York Times article, "On a Scale of 1 to 10, How Weird Are You?" features an interview with CEO Tony Hsieh in which he talks about the importance of company culture. 

To define Zappos' culture, he led a year-long process to articulate their 10 core values.  In the article, he explains, "We wanted to come up with committable core values, meaning that we would actually be willing to hire and fire people based on these values, regardless of their individual job performance."  He engaged employees in helping to identify their 10 values:

1. Deliver WOW through service.
2. Embrace and drive change.
3. Create fun and a little weirdness.
4. Be adventurous, creative and open-minded.
5. Pursue growth and learning.
6. Build open and honest relationships with communication.
7. Build a positive team and family spirit.
8. Do more with less.
9. Be passionate and determined
10. Be humble.

Admittedly, there is a lot that could be quibbled over here.  Are these values or competencies or both?  Is is really fair to hold everyone accountable for being fun?  Is is realistic that everyone have a personality that reflects embracing and driving change?  

Technicalities aside, what Mr. Hsieh did was define success.  He drew a line in the sand and said, "This is what I - we - expect.  Period."  He's ready to hire and fire based on these expectations.  And study after study, Zappos is one of the best places to work.

This is such an outstanding example of backing up activities like hiring, interviewing, changing culture, etc. all the way back to defining expectations.  It sounds so simple, but it's hard work (took Zappos a year) and it can seem overwhelming and nebulous at the start.  But the payoff is huge.  

Once you know your expectations (on the company scale and at the individual level), so much of the other work falls into place.  Applicant screening becomes a simple exercise in probing to see if a candidate can meet the expectations.  Employee recruiting is simply sharing the expectations.  Organizational alignment is quite straightforward, because the expectations at the top are clear.

Contact us if you'd like to start the conversation about your values - your expectations - I promise it will pay off. 



  
 

I've been working with a client this week who started using Preditive Index® in their applicant screening process after ADVISA took them through a custom training program.  Recently, there had been a hiccup and some less than ideal communications around one recent hire, so they were coming back for guidance.  We sorted through the bumps they'd had and here's a truth that emerged:  there are some very delicate aspects of hiring, regardless of if you use personality assessments and which one you might use.

1. When you're doing candidate screening, you have to know what you need and you have to know your deal-breakers, but you also have to know where you have wiggle room.  In other words, you have to apply wisdom. For example, you say you need 10 years experience, but this is actually one you can fudge on when you get somone with 8 years experience with really tremendous work during that time, right?  But you know that someone with only 2 years experience just won't work - deal-breaker.  Same thing if you're using personality assessment: you have to know the critical personality traits you need, and then you have to consider where you have wiggle room.
2. Reprioritizing is a reality.  You can start a search knowing that you want a certain kind of experience, a certain personality, and you're willing to pay a certain amount, but you may have to move around on some or all of those as you look at your candidate pool.  This happens in the hiring process with or without the incorporation of a personality assessment.
3. Hiring decisions and search status should be communicated by Human Resources (or one designated person who's coached on how to do this, if there's no HR).  This helps protect the company against risk and helps provide the best experience for candidates.
4. When you reject a candidate, resist the temptation to explain why.  This really gets hard when a candidate comes asking why they weren't offer a job.  The best answer is always, "Another candidate fit our needs better."  Or, if no one was selected, "We just didn't find the right candidate."  In both cases it's good to add, "You're welcome to apply again in the future."  That's it.

There are multiple products in the marketplace for scripted interviews in which every candidate is asked the exact same questions - the interviewer literally reads the script.

Understandably, HR departments and hiring managers find this to be appealing for candidate screening because it's simple: the script tells everyone involved exactly what to do.  Interview scripts I've seen can also be very comprehensive, or exhaustive, depending on your standpoint. 
 

1. interviewers disengage from thinking and do not ask candidate-specific questions or important follow-up questions;
2. candidates feel “depersonalized” and lose interest in the opportunity.

Is this how you want hiring managers and top candidates feeling?  Would you describe this as best hiring practices? 
 

Consider an alternative: structured interviews. 

Like scripted interviews, structured interviews have a pre-determined format that eliminates haphazard questioning and helps interviewers cover the critical areas and avoid unimportant (or non-compliant) questions. However, structured interviews support customized interview questions for a particular candidate. This customization engages the interviewers more, elicits more meaningful information about the candidate, and provides a better experience for the candidates. 

Here are important elements for a successful structured interview as part of your applicant screening process. 

• Facilitation - Designate someone as the facilitator for the interview.  This is the "ringmaster" who helps to keep the discussion focused and flowing.
• Team - Interview as a team, so that people can take turns listening and thinking, rather than just trying to think of the next question. 
• Deal-breaker list - List the critical qualifications for what someone needs to know and how they need to do their job.
• Interview segments - Rather than a list of questions, take a deal-breaker and consider it to be a segment of the interview where multiple questions are asked around the same factor. For example: With a sales person, explore how strategic they are with selling.  Start with, "I see you exceded goal each of the past 4 years.  Tell us how you did that." Then keep peeling away the onion to get to how they accomplished this (and consider if how they did it fits with your needs). 

If you'd like to learn more about structured inteviews, contact me at ADVISA - we can explore how structured interviews may work for you.