Because We’ve Always Done It This Way…

Most companies and hiring managers have a preferred method of screening, interviewing and eventually hiring qualified employees. But most don’t have a definable reason why.

As a result, managers spend absurd amounts of time working through outdated processes to hire qualified individuals every day. Making yourself (and candidates) jump through hoops because “we’ve always done it this way” is giving you a competitive disadvantage and allowing quality professionals slip away to other opportunities or worse, to your competition.

Remember, there are many different reasons for hiring new employees. If the reasons are different, the process should be different. Do you need someone in this position yesterday? Speed up the process. Hire off the phone, Skype or first interview. Is the skill set niche or very technical? Have a trusted partner in the room or on the phone to do a technical screen first or during the initial interview.

The point is: add some fluidity to your interview process; don’t be so rigid in your approach.

Have a plan and think through the process. Determine what is most important to you when you’re hiring. Is the speed of hiring important? Is it the quality of candidates? Or is protecting my budget most important? Understand that you can rarely have all three. If your team needed someone to start in a position “yesterday,” you may need to be flexible on salary or the cost of the person to make that happen. Or if cost is most important, quality or speed may suffer as a result.

Be sure to ask questions that are pertinent to the position. Does it really matter what a candidate’s weaknesses are? Has an interviewee ever answered this question honestly?

Consider eliminating certain parts of the process to save yourself time. For instance, why are you phone screening a candidate for your next open position? Unless the position you’re hiring for requires heavy amounts of time on the phone, why are you committing an hour or even a half hour to speaking to candidates on the phone?

Stop! Move directly to the face to face interview. Save yourself hours of time and achieve the same results.

Or conversely, doing in-person interviews for positions that are not customer facing may not be the best use of company time.

2nd, 3rd, 4th interviews, etc. ad nauseam, as well, can communicate disorganization to potential recruits and leave you vulnerable to losing great people. I understand you want to be sure you’re making the right decision and find the perfect candidate but evaluate your process. Can you condense it? Can you make it more candidate friendly? Can you save yourself time, energy, resources?

Having a plan when you begin engaging candidates, determining what’s important and eliminating superfluous steps in your process will increase your effectiveness, save you time and lead to onboarding better candidates faster.

Happy hiring!