August Newsletter

If You Don’t Know Who Makes The Hiring Decision, You Won’t Make a Hire

Clark Harvey, President

Consulting is fascinating for many reasons, but what most interests me about working with clients is that the problems they face are often only symptoms of something larger lurking beneath the surface. In the case of recruiting, for example, we often hear that companies can’t find the right people to hire. However, after asking some probing questions, we uncover significant, yet solvable, issues with their internal hiring process.

An element of the hiring process that creates significant heartburn for hiring teams is not defining who will make the ultimate hiring decision. The reason? If you craft a compelling job description, construct a top-notch compensation package, find a great slate of candidates, and execute an efficient and thorough interview process without knowing who has the authority to make a job offer, you’ll spin your wheels and not make a decision, meaning your team has wasted countless hours of precious time. And, oftentimes, you’ll have to start the recruiting process from scratch, because good candidates do not wait long for offers and will move on to other opportunities.

If you’re reading this and this scenario sounds foreign to you, congratulations. You likely work in a company with only a few key decision-makers or you’ve worked out the kinks in your process in the past. But your company is the exception, not the rule.

The inability to make a hiring decision often stems from consensus-driven, collaborative work cultures that want to involve as many stakeholders as possible when interviewing talent. While those efforts are admirable and have great intentions, myriad complications rear their ugly heads in collective cultures such as this:

·???????Interview scheduling is a nightmare because too many people need to interview the candidate?

·???????The more people involved in a hiring process, the longer it takes to gather feedback from the interview team

·???????It is exceedingly rare for an interview team comprised of more than 3 people to agree on candidate assessments, resulting in gridlock and frustration for both companies and candidates

Fortunately, you can implement very simple strategies to streamline your interview decision-making process. Here are just a couple we’ve found to be really helpful:

·???????Before a job is even approved by top management, a decision-making team of no more than 3 people must be defined

·???????Run a candidate debrief process immediately after the interview. Allow all parties to express opinions, but make it known who will “pull the trigger” and be responsible for making the hire/no hire decision

·???????Prune back the number of interviewers. There’s an old expression that “Too many cooks spoil the broth”, and it definitely applies to recruiting. Invite trusted partners from key functional areas into your hiring process and keep the interview schedule simple. Your interview scheduling team will also thank you for making their lives easier!

·???????Interview no more than 3 candidates for the final round if at all possible. We often become paralyzed when reviewing too many options (think about the last time you went to a restaurant with a huge menu!). If your job description is well-written, you know what skills are needed in the role, and you’re seeing decent candidates, you should be able to make a hiring decision quickly

Finally, know that, even if you do everything really well when evaluating talent, hiring is really hard, and you’re not going to get it right every time. Do your best to make a solid decision and live with it. You’re in a leadership capacity for a reason: to make critical decisions. Your company needs you to be a confident leader when making hires, and when you follow a solid hiring process, you’ll often make a good choice.

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