Cautionary tales
Over the past eight articles I shared a process that can be used by Talent Acquisition to show a value-added, strategic side that goes beyond sourcing, attracting, selecting, and negotiating with new hires. Having used this exact methodology dozens of times, I want to also share a few experiences and observations that you should be aware of so that you can prevent or mitigate these issues at your organization.
When a company creates a core competency model, they sometimes find that hiring has become very homogenous. The value behind diversity is how it adds new perspectives and points of view to the organization. If everyone has the same values, approaches, and opinions, an organization will become stagnant and fall behind its competitors. You must always hire for ‘culture add’ - not ‘culture fit.’ Look for unanticipated consequences such as only white males applying for a job. Unless your organization has a really bad online reputation (e.g. racist or sexist leaders), it might be that your language and price of admission (POA) competencies are very pale and male. If no one over 30 is applying for a job then you might have to worry about an ageist reputation or language.?
There are several tools that are freely available online to help identify -ist language. You can run your competencies and their definitions through these tools. They are not just for job descriptions, but run those through the tools as well. Tweak and test them again until you have inclusive language that does not inadvertently trigger potential candidates.?
During the creation of the position profile, the participants are probably going to add confusing things to the list of competencies. That is why I encourage the facilitator to educate the participants during the meeting by sharing each competency category and definition, along with a few examples. But, even then someone may go off-track. The good news is that you are the person typing up the results and creating the outline. This gives you the power to edit as you type. Clean things up, remove redundancies, ensure spelling and grammar are accurate, use a single/consistent tense, and make sure the document is credible. (Errors hurt your credibility.) During the typing of the notes, you can also address points of contention (e.g. when people disagreed on a task being important or not). Don’t fall for ‘the loudest person in the room is right’ when you consolidate the notes. Err on the side of the thoughtful people in the room/online.?
Equity and fairness are critical during the selection process. When any step requires a judgment call or opinion (as opposed to clearly measurable facts), that step will be fouled up if you have more than one person doing the scoring. For example, one person is very critical and has super high expectations so their scores are fairly low, while another person involved in the process is more laid back and forgiving - resulting in higher scores. The only way to get comparable scores for each candidate is to have one, single person complete each of the steps where scoring can be somewhat objective. I have found that training one person to be the ‘customer’ or ‘manager’ in the job simulation, while having another person trained to score the candidates is the best way to go for consistent results.?
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A final thought… When you map out the steps in the selection process, prevent or mitigate heuristics and bias (hard-wired, decision-making mental shortcuts that are tempting, but often inaccurate gut feelings). For example, if the hiring manager hears comments about the candidates before the manager’s steps in the selection process, the hiring manager’s brain will latch onto anything that confirms what the manager previously heard - and reject anything to the contrary. There are a LOT of articles about the impact of cognitive biases on the selection process so I won’t keep harping on it, but it is important to ensure you create a process and tools that result in the best candidate for the job being hired.
I hope this short series of articles was helpful. Let me know in the comments what you think, or message me if you have any questions. Best of luck avoiding the RIFs!?