This is the final installment of a series on Best Hiring Practices.  The series is not intended to be all-inclusive, but rather an examination of the most impactful things you can do to improve your hiring process.  In the previous postings, we’ve talked about the need to hire well . . . and the high cost of a bad hire.  We’ve talked about the need to write a detailed job description including desired behaviors.  And we’ve talked about the need to script interview questions that will reveal the behaviors we’re looking for.  Now we need to talk about the actual conduct of the interview.  If you don’t conduct job interviews very often and are unsure of your skill as an interviewer, please read below.

Prior to inviting an applicant in for an actual face-to-face, in person interview, you should do a brief screening interview on the phone.  In a tough job market as we have now, desperate job-seekers will apply for positions even though they don’t meet the job requirements.  So the purpose of the telephone screener is to make sure an applicant has the essentials of the job requirements before we devote interview time to him or her.  What we’re looking for here are the “deal breakers,” the quantitative things that an applicant absolutely, positively must have . . . if you don’t have these essential job requirements, don’t call, don’t write, don’t stop by because we have nothing to talk about.  These would include specific skill requirements, college degrees earned, years of experience, and so forth.  The qualitative stuff is what we’ll try to ferret out during the in person interview.

So now we’re armed with well-scripted interview questions and we have some qualified candidates that we want to interview.  So what’s next?  How do we get the most out of the interview?

•    First and foremost, listen intently to the answers an applicant is giving you.  Seems obvious, right?  But an inexperienced interviewer may see the questions as a checklist that needs to be completed.  Such an interviewer is so focused on checking off the current question and formulating the next that he or she misses a lot of what the applicant is saying.  So stay in the moment and stay focused.  If an applicant’s answer to your question is unclear or needs refinement, be prepared to ask clarifying follow-up questions until you’re satisfied you have the information you want.

•    Use your eyes.  Look for body language.  Is the candidate making good eye contact?  Does the applicant appear confident or apprehensive?  Is he or she energized or more subdued?  A candidate will give you a lot of visual cues if you’re alert for them.

•    Take notes, particularly when you’re doing a number of interviews.  Otherwise, afterwards, you may have difficulty remembering which candidate said what.  If you want to jot your notes immediately after the interview rather than during the interview, that’s OK as long as you capture your important thoughts and reactions about the applicant.

•    Keep control of the interview and don’t let it wonder off topic.  However, don’t be so tied to your script that you ignore your natural curiosity.  If a candidate says something interesting or surprising (but relevant), go with it.  Make it a conversation, but keep the conversation focused.

•    Consider involving someone else in the interview process . . . either jointly with you in your interview, or separately in a second interview.  It’s often useful to have a second opinion when you’re weighing one candidate against another.

Remember, one wrong question, or one critical question you should have asked but didn’t, could result in a bad hire, disrupting your company and costing it thousands of dollars.  If you or your hiring managers have  not had any coaching or training on the topic of legal interview questions, how to secure proof of a person’s accomplishments, or how to evaluate skills effectively, please call me right now to learn how.

In our last posting on “Best Hiring Practices,” we talked about the need to write a comprehensive job description detailing not only the skills an applicant must have, but also the behaviors.  Now the next step is to prepare written interview questions.  Why written?  For that answer, and for a lot more on preparing for interviews, please read below.

Hey, wait a minute!  Before we can interview anyone, we have to find them first.  Aren’t we going to talk about how we generate a stream of qualified applicants?  Well, no we’re not.  The best ways to attract viable candidate varies tremendously depending on the job you’re trying to fill, the industry you’re in, and where in the country you’re located.  So for purposes of our Best Hiring Practices discussions, we’ll assume you know how to find or attract the right candidates for your job.

A NOTE ON RECRUITERS.  Some companies use professional recruiters to help find qualified applicants.  Are recruiters expensive?  Yes they are . . . but not nearly as expensive as a bad hire.  So using a recruiter might be a very cost-effective move, particularly for a higher level position.  And if you do use a recruiter, just remember that you do not abdicate responsibility for who you choose to hire.  If the recruiter properly screens candidates for the skills and behaviors you have specified, he’s done his job.  If a candidate doesn’t work out because you misread how he or she would fit into your culture, or because you omitted something from the job description, that’s on you, not the recruiter.

So let’s talk about interview questions.  Why write them?  Because interviews are simply another source of data about a candidate.  You’ll get some data from resumes, some from references, and some from interviews.  So you want to make sure the questions are structured to deliver the data you want.  The answer to a poorly worded or vague question may give you improper or misleading information.  Furthermore, putting your questions in writing insures that you don’t forget anything during the interview.  Besides, preparing for an interview by writing out the questions you intend to ask is just good discipline . . . a productive interview is too important to just go in and “wing it.”

HR professionals tell us that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.  So do not ask hypothetical questions (“What would you do if . . . “) because the candidate can give whatever answer he or she believes you want to hear, and there’s no way to verify it.  Instead, ask about things in the candidates own history.  If the job description specifies five years of sales experience, you might ask the candidate for the most difficult customer he had to work with, and what she did to overcome those difficulties.  Or if the job requires working in a team, you might say to the candidate, “Give me an example from your previous work when you’ve had to achieve goals working with others.”

So commit your interview questions to paper.  Think carefully about the data you want to extract with your questions.  Base the questions on the applicant’s past work experience.  Do those three things, and you’re ready for the actual interview.  No?  Still not comfortable with structuring the interview questions effectively?  Then call me.  We should talk.

This is the first installment of a series on “best hiring practices,” and as such, it probably makes sense to start at the beginning.  The real beginning is making the decision that you need to hire someone, but for this purpose, we’ll assume you’ve already done that and that you now need to take the first step in a “hiring process.”  That first step is writing a position description which is critical to a good hire . . . and a step that many hiring managers get wrong.  For more on this, please read below.

Writing a position description is tedious, isn’t it?  So some hiring managers will give this critical step short shrift or skip it altogether.  But why is this step critical?  Because, when done correctly, it forces the hiring manager to think carefully about all aspects of the job and all the things a candidate will need to be successful.  Besides, there may be more than one person involved in the hiring process, so a written position description insures that everyone has the same understanding of the job requirements.

The problem is, we tend to get too focused on the skills a candidate must have.
•    The candidate must be able to type 60 words per minute and must know this programming language or that.
•    The candidate must have at least three years of experience selling in our industry.
•    The candidate must have prior C-level experience.
•    Etc., etc., etc.
And that makes sense, doesn’t it?  I mean, without certain, specific skill sets, the candidate can’t possibly succeed in this job, so we need to make sure we get those right.  So where’s the problem?

The problem is behaviors.  We get so focused on getting the skills right that we pay insufficient attention (or no attention at all) to the behaviors a candidate will need to be successful.  It’s axiomatic in HR circles to say, “We hire for skills and fire for behaviors.”  And that’s true.  So we need to think carefully about the behaviors a candidate will need to be successful in this specific job.  For instance, for a high-volume, fast-paced sales force, we’d probably be looking for a high-energy person who runs around all day with his hair on fire.  On the other hand, if we have a product with a long sales cycle, we’d probably be looking for a salesperson who is patient and persistent.

But there’s also your organization’s culture to consider.  What behaviors do we value around here?
•    Do we want people who will challenge us?
•    Do we want people who will march in lock step with us?
•    Do we value the tortoise or the hare?
•    Do we want a team player or a lone wolf?

So we need to consider both.  What behaviors will the candidate need to be successful for this job, and what behaviors will he or she need to be successful within our organizational norms?  And both need to be included in our written position description.

Although unemployment is still high and small business owners are reluctant to undo some of the painful staffing cuts they’ve had to make, some owners are creeping back into the job market to fill some needed vacancies.  So it seems an appropriate time to talk about a hiring “process.”  While there’s no hiring process that can guarantee a successful hire (one where the employee thrives in the company’s culture and meets or exceeds the company’s performance expectations), there are things you can do to greatly increase the odds in your favor.  For more on this, please read below.

A bad hire, particularly for a key position, can be very, very costly.  Obviously, there are “hard” dollars at stake . . . payroll and benefits for sure, maybe recruiting fees, and maybe training costs.  In fact, executive recruiter Russ Riendeau says he has seen the “hard” costs of a bad hire go as high as $55,000 in a 6-month period.  But there are soft costs as well, not the least of which is “lost opportunity.”  Let’s say we have a narrow window of opportunity to open a new sales territory.  We hire a salesperson, but after six months of poor performance, we have to terminate him.  So whatever we paid him during that time is down the drain, but worse, our window of opportunity is now closed.  Whatever we paid him could be a drop in the bucket compared to the unrealized revenue we had hoped to get from the new sales territory.

So you would think when a small business owner is poised to hire someone, s/he would do everything possible to make it a successful hire.

Unfortunately, unlike public corporations that have HR departments to oversee an effective hiring process, small businesses generally don’t bring on new people very often, so they never develop the skills they need to make smart hiring choices.  Or, impatient with a step-by-step, methodical hiring process, an owner may think, “I’ll just trust my gut instinct” . . . always a bad idea and certain to result in a bad hire.

The good news is, there are things a small company can do to improve its odds of hiring well.  They take time and they take work, but if they result in an effective hiring process (one that increases your odds of hiring well), the effort will easily pay for itself.  So this kicks off a series on “best practices” for a sound hiring process.  Over the next several postings, we’ll be talking about some of those things that will improve your hiring track record.

Meanwhile, if you feel your hiring track record has been so abysmally poor that you need some more intense help, call me.  We should talk.