The costs of a bad hire are enormous as any human resources department can well attest; costs in terms of time and resources entailed in sourcing, orientation, administration, relocation, training and upfront bonuses as well as costs in terms of team and manager morale, company reputation and delayed roles and responsibilities. Here from the career experts at Bayt.com are six steps to help streamline the recruiting process and avoid common pitfalls:
Involve everyone in the candidate sourcing process and aim to exhaust both the active jobseeker pool as well as the "hidden talent" marketplace. Very often a company in filling a position will rely exclusively on responses to an ad placed in a newspaper, industry journal or industry website, or even more narrowly their existing internal database of candidates. Whilst these are good sources of CVs from "active" jobseekers, as are industry or college career fairs and company open-houses, these methods of sourcing candidates limit the efficacy of the hiring process by eliminating the vast pool of qualified professionals who are ideal for the position but are not actively looking for a position at the time. Moreover, as the company is not in the core business of collecting CVs or keeping them current, their databases will likely be incomplete or dated and often, especially if a new department or job is being created, somewhat irrelevant.
To augment its sourcing activities, broaden the talent pool in a targeted manner and reach this "hidden" or "passive" jobseeker market it is imperative for a hiring company to widen the net in its sourcing activities. Targeted on-line recruitment firms such as Bayt.com which aggressively and professionally market themselves to and capture both passive and active jobseekers have extremely rich, current and easily searchable pan-regional, pan-industrial databases which cover all career levels and are thus a goldmine for employers.
Another way to widen the net is to network aggressively within the professional community in order to identify relevant winning candidates and approach or "headhunt" them either directly or through a professional recruitment services firm. The most professional recruitment firms have research departments staffed with industry specialists who are extremely familiar with the target industry segment and can quickly identify and zone-in on the right candidates. Bayt.com augments its global databases with a world-class Executive Search department which researches and "headhunts" candidates for senior executive assignments. Bayt.com also has a Traditional recruiting arm for companies that are under-resourced or shy away from the online option. Head-hunting can however also be done in-house by the hiring manager and his team. Vendors, competitors, clients, affiliates and friends in the industry can all be approached when searching for a prime candidate to exhaust this "hidden" market for talent and gain a networking "foothold" within the circles the target candidate operates in. Line managers should be very conversant with the circle of influence an ideal candidate will have, and should base their search accordingly as they start networking and sending out search signals within their professional community.
Many firms offer internal reward schemes for employees who recommend candidates that get hired as a way to encourage networking, decrease hiring costs and widen their candidate pool. It is also important that the company doesn't overlook its most important talent pool, its existing workforce. It may well be that for a given position the best candidate is found by hiring and developing from within.
It is critical before embarking on a candidate search to really gain an understanding of the unique requirements of the job and construct an accurate job description with its corresponding skills and competency requirements. The manager with the support of the team must really familiarize themseles with intricate detail on the objectives of the position, the individual roles and responsibilities entailed and the skills, competencies and abilities required to optimize performance on the job. The question "What makes a successful candidate" must be answered in fine detail by the manager and his team before a successful job search can be embarked on.
Once a manager and his team have become very attuned to the precise nature and requirements of the job, both strategic and tactical, they can formulate a precise job description and from that a unique and accurate skills/competencies inventory and embark on finding appropriate candidates. Having an overriding objective for the job is insufficient to identify star candidates; the manager must be conversant with the tactical aspects in terms of the multitude of essential individual tasks and responsibilities that the potential new team member must be able to perfect in order to excel in the job. To recruit the right candidate there is no substitute for a sound understanding of the intricacies of the job and all the skills and competencies required to achieve the objective and fulfil the role's responsibilities to the required standard.
Too many broad traditional interviews fail miserably because by now all interviewees have learnt to master this type of interview and can prepare for and marshal all the correct responses from the plethora of literature available on the fine art of passing an interview. A lot of questions asked in this type of interview are largely irrelevant and rendered even more so by the fact that the jobseekers have swallowed the standard textbook responses and can pass this type of interview in their sleep. Job interviews must be tailored to the job at hand.
It is critical to remember when interviewing a candidate that he/she is being screened for willingness and ability to do the particular job as well his/her ability to fit into the immediate team and company culture using past experiences/aptitudes as a frame of reference. A lot of time must be spent determining each of the candidate's abilities, his/her aptitude, his/her attitude and whether the candidate is indeed the right match for the job i.e. whether the candidate can actually do the required work and achieve the role's objectives and at the same time be an accepted, welcome addition to the existing team. All interview questions must be tailored accordingly. Once a given position's key roles and responsibilities have been properly defined and a skills inventory for the star candidate has been formulated, interview questions can be mapped accordingly. The candidate should wherever possible be asked to refer to examples from his/her past experiences to support his/her answers.
The most effective interviews have broken down the job at hand into its required integral components and are able to address each of the required areas of expertise through a focused job-specific behavioral interview. The interview should cover both "technical" skills and "soft" skills. The key is to determine the problems and gaps a candidate will be facing on the job and assess during the interview to the extent possible how he/she will solve the problems and fill the needs gaps efficiently, effectively and profitably and within the company's general guidelines. A candidate's problem solving abilities and his/her acumen in approaching a relevant problem, thinking it through and delivering a response that is profitability-driven and adherent to the company's vision, mission and operational/technical/cultural parameters should be key to whether the candidate gets hired. His/her ability to formulate and articulate a valid bottom-line driven response to an actual company/job-specific problem will demonstrate his/her suitability for the job at hand far more effectively and precisely than more general interview questions.
Often the interview process is broken into at least two stages; the first stage is to determine the candidate's technical skills and whether he/she can and will actually do the job effectively using his/her past history as a reference; and the second stage to test soft skills, emotional intelligence, rapport with the team and other intangibles such as character, style and personality.
Since the goal is to determine whether the candidate is willing and able to do the job, allowing him/her to come to the interview fully prepared may be a very wise step. Giving him/her a full job description and the option of researching the company beforehand by pointing out websites, company literature and industry news leaves fertile ground to test his job acumen as well as proactivity, thoroughness and "willingness" quotient at the interview. Failure to research the company and industry despite having been prompted in that direction before-hand may well indicate laziness, sloppiness and a certain lack of "willingness" to take and adapt to the job.
Another good idea depending on the nature of the position is to give the candidate "homework". His/her response to the problems posed to him/her and the extent to which he/she has gone above and beyond the call of duty to formulate a valid solution as presented during the interview will go a long way in shedding light on both the candidate's character and work ethic as well as his/her technical skills, communication skills, problem-solving ability and work style. It will also go a long way in showing the line manager whether the candidate can actually understand the problems faced and can apply his/her existing skillset in all its manifestations to do the job at hand within the required timeframes. An alternative to doling out "homework" is to give the candidate a real-life problem during the interview to solve or to ask the candidate to actually do a certain aspect of the job during the interview. Management consulting firms are well known to present prospective employees with realistic problems and case studies during their interviews to see how quickly the candidates can think on their feet and in what direction their problem-solving acumen takes them.
Just as it is of tremendous value-added that the sourcing activity is not left exclusively in the domain of the human resources department but disbursed to and dissolved amongst the manager and his team, it is also critical that the hiring decision is a team effort with multiple decision-makers, especially the line manager, involved. Have the entire team as well as others in the firms he/she may be regularly interacting with meet with the candidate if possible. Specifically with the more technical positions, since they are more conversant in the finer technical details than the HR department, the line management with the support of their teams, must take a very active role in the sourcing, screening and hiring process.
Another reason hiring must be a team effort is that the candidate, in addition to knowing the technicalities of the job and having a sound understanding of the trajectory he/she will pursue to achieve his/her goals profitably, must also get along with the rest of the team as well as everyone else in the firm he/she will have to interact with on an ongoing basis. The time to discover if the candidate will have a good rapport with the team and does not have a d etrimental relationship with someone important in the firm is at the interview stage not shortly after he/she has been hired.
There is no substitute for a sound reference check to determine whether the candidate has indeed accomplished all that is stated on his/her CV and is in a position to contribute to your company's bottom line. Reference checks are ideally conducted by the line manager who can use them to ask questions about the candidate that were left unanswered during the interview stage and to ensure that the candidate has not misrepresented his/herself.
Common reference questions are "Why did the candidate leave your company?" "What were the candidate's roles and responsibilities?" "How would you rate the candidate's performance on the job?" "Do you recommend this candidate for a job that requires xyz...?" and "Would you hire this candidate to work with you again?" Listen for the enthusiasm with which the previous employer recommends the candidate and allow him/her to talk in as much detail as possible about his/her experience with the candidate and the candidate's strengths and weaknesses. This is an ideal time to cover bases that were not covered during the interview or address areas the manager is still in doubt about whether it be technical skills, attitude, motivation, personality, emotional intelligence or aptitude to learn.
