As all employers quickly learn,
there's a world of difference between a worker who's
correctly matched to their job and their organization, and one who
is not.
But how do you find and match the right
people to the right jobs? By including, in your comprehensive
people strategy, a well-structured recruiting and selection
program. The key to successfully developing such a program is to
follow a proven recruiting process for the positions you need to
fill. Resist the temptation to omit steps, because shortcutting the
process can shortchange your results. Here's what you'll
need to do:
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1. Develop accurate job
descriptions. Your first step is to make sure you have an
effective job description for each position in your company. Your
job descriptions should reflect careful thought as to the roles the
individual will fill, the skill sets they'll need, the
personality attributes that are important to completing their
tasks, and any relevant experience that would differentiate one
applicant from another. This may sound fairly basic, but you'd
be surprised at how many small companies fail to develop or
maintain updated job descriptions.
2. Compile a "success
profile." In addition to creating job descriptions,
it's important to develop a "success profile" of the
ideal employee for key positions in your company that are critical
to the execution of your business plan. These might include such
positions as team leaders, district managers and salespeople. For
example, let's say you currently have 20 salespeople. Within
that group, you have four that are top performers, 12 that are
middle-of-the-road and four that aren't quite making the grade.
If you could bump the number of folks in the top group from 20
percent to 33 percent, that could have a dramatic impact on your
company's performance.
To accomplish that goal, you need to
profile everyone in the sales group to identify any skills and
attributes that are common to the top group but missing from the
other groups. Using this information, you'll be able to develop
a profile to help you select the candidates most likely to succeed
in that position. Remember, you can't tell if you've found
a match if you're not matching candidates against a specific
profile.
3. Draft the ad, describing the
position and the key qualifications required. Although some
applicants will ignore these requirements and respond regardless,
including this information will help you limit the number of
unqualified applicants.
4. Post the ad in the mediums most
likely to reach your potential job candidates. Of course, the
Internet has become the leading venue for posting job openings, but
don't overlook targeted industry publications and local
newspapers.
5. Develop a series of
phone-screening questions. Compile a list of suitable questions
you can ask over the phone to help you quickly identify qualified
candidates and eliminate everyone else.
6. Review the resumes you receive and
identify your best candidates. Once you post your ad,
you'll start receiving resumes...sometimes many more than you
anticipated. Knowing what you're looking for in terms of
experience, education and skills will help you weed through these
resumes quickly and identify potential candidates.
7. Screen candidates by phone.
Once you've narrowed your stack of resumes to a handful of
potential applicants, call the candidates and use your
phone-screening questions to further narrow the field. Using a
consistent set of questions in both this step and your face-to-face
interviews will help ensure you're evaluating candidates
equally.
8. Select candidates for
assessment. Based on the responses to your phone interviews,
select the candidates you feel are best qualified for the next step
in the process.
9. Assess your potential candidates
for their skills and attributes using a proven assessment tool.
A resume and phone interview can only tell you so much about a job
applicant, so you'll need a dependable assessment tool to help
you analyze the core behavioral traits and cognitive reasoning
speed of your applicants. For example, a good test will provide
insights as to whether the individual is conscientious or
lackadaisical, introverted or extroverted, agreeable or
uncompromising, open to new ideas or close-minded, and emotionally
stable or anxious and insecure.
The success profile you created for each
position will help you determine which behavioral traits are
important for that position. For example, you would expect a
successful salesperson to be extroverted. On the other hand,
someone filling a clerical position might be more
introverted.
These assessment tests can be
administered in person or online. Online testing and submission of
results can help you determine whether the applicant should be
invited for a personal interview.
10. Schedule and conduct candidate
interviews. Once you've selected candidates based on the
previous steps, schedule and conduct the interviews. Use a
consistent set of 10 or 12 questions to maintain a structured
interview and offer a sound basis for comparing
applicants.
11. Select the candidate. Make
your selection by matching the best applicant to the profiled job
description.
12. Run a background check on the
individual to uncover any potential problems not revealed by
previous testing and interviews.
13. Make your offer to the
candidate. The information you collected during the interview
process will provide you with important insights as to starting
compensation levels and training needs.
Additional Pre-Recruiting
Tips
Before you start the hiring process,
determine your strategy relative to how people fit into your
organization. What is your process for making sure they're a
good fit with your company's culture? Decide whether your
approach to the cultural question should include a second
interview. Also, who else, if anyone, do you involve in the
interviews to help make this selection and judge the candidate?
Your goal is to have a plan that will help you determine whether
you have a qualified applicant who will fit into your company's
culture.
In addition, decide whether you're
going to conduct pre-employment testing. How much is it worth for
you to know an individual's strengths and weaknesses, not just
as a hire/don't hire test, but as a coaching tool to help you
determine their training needs and the best approach to maximize
the person's productivity? Pre-employment testing is often
overlooked, when it could be a very valuable tool. For example, if
you find an applicant who fits the job description and appears to
be the person you want to hire, pre-employment testing can help you
determine how to work with them more effectively and move them
along in your organization.
If you want your business to attract and
retain good clients, your comprehensive people strategy must
include a recruiting and selection strategy that attracts and
retains quality employees. Following a well-thought-out, structured
process will help you best match the right people to the right jobs
in your company.