Good interviewing takes skill but locating the right people first is the key to successful hiring.

Where do you find the right person to hire?

Finding new people for your staff can be such a rush, but unfortunately it is often just a rushedactivity.  Interviewing new candidates, especially the right candidates can be an exciting and pleasant experience for a manager.  Finding and hiring the right people will ultimately make the rest of a management job easier.  Placing a priority on finding, selecting, and hiring the right person is a lesson that we seem to have to learn over and over again. Where do we find the right people and how do we know when they are the right ones?

What can I do to get the unqualified ones out of my view so I can see the right ones?

No matter what type of hiring you are doing, there will be more candidates applying than just the ones who are qualified.  The idea, though, is to get quality responses; there is no prize for getting the most responses.  There are several actions you can take, as a manager, to reduce the number of unqualified candidates you have to review while making the qualified ones easier to locate.  Here is the basic list of things that help:

• Have clear and objective job descriptions
• Compose carefully worded advertising copy
• Establish an application or résumé screening process
• Set guidelines for selecting who gets in-person interviews

“Why do I need job descriptions when I know it in my head what I need?”

In preparation for hiring, there is nothing that is more important or more basic than the task of creating job descriptions.  Job descriptions, carefully written, provide the benchmark—the raised bar—the reference point—for judging the right candidate to be interviewed.  Having one in your head doesn’t help the others involved in the process.  Job descriptions are not easy to verbalize and commit to paper, but it is a necessary step.  The description should contain the minimum requirements necessary that a person must possess to be a candidate for that particular job.  Basic rules for developing job descriptions include:

• Don’t try to exhaustively list everything the person might have to do.
• Don’t try to create the dream position.
• Do try to create the minimum standards needed.
• Do be objective about those needs.

Don’t presume that all candidates have the same level of basic skills

Some specific requirements might even be too obvious to see.  For example, a million-dollar home building contractor might surprise you if he tells you how many applicants he sees who cannot interpret the marks on a measuring tape.  If that’s a requirement, it should be in the job description however basic it may seem at the time.  Once the manager has identified and verbalized the job requirements, the process of identifying the proper interview candidates becomes much simpler.

When advertising an open position, the job description should be your guide in writing effective ad copy.  Remember, the idea is to get the right responses not a lot of responses.  Whether you are advertising in newspaper classifieds, trade magazines or professional journals, the aim is still the same:

• Attract the right people with the right qualifications.
• Be as specific and precise as possible in broadcasting your needs.

If you need someone who can read a measuring tape, and you find that you get applicants who cannot, then that need should be stated in your ad.  If you require a bachelor’s degree in some specific field, it should be stated.  The ad must maintain the benchmark you have set in the job description.  If it does, then sorting the applications or résumés will be much easier.

Once the applications start to stack up in the office, or the résumés start coming in the mail, one of the staff can make a cursory review to see if each matches the job description requirements.  The goal is to get several solid leads.  The more technically demanding the job, the more candidates you need to review.  Six to ten should be plenty.  Matching and comparing is a simple task once you have job descriptions as a baseline reference.  Form three stacks: YES, MAYBE, and NO.  The YES stack should contain the best half-dozen (or so) matches to the requirements and these candidates can be scheduled right away for in-person interviews.

Pre-screen by telephone interesting candidates from the MAYBE stack

The next item of business is the MAYBE pile and phone screening is the next big step.  This stack has many of the “right people” in it and should not be discarded or ignored.  Chances are very good your very best candidate will be in this stack.   Many top-notch employees come from the MAYBE stacks as they often bring other additional strengths with them.  You will likely find four or five more who offer that something special even if at first glance they appear to be a little weaker in one or more of the pre-determined areas.  It is worth the time to call each of these candidates and pre-screen them with specific questions in mind.

What questions can be asked that help a pre-screening interview?

To prepare for phone screening, the manager should develop five to ten questions and write them out.  In this way, each candidate screened gets to respond to the same questions asked and hear them in the same tone.  The purpose behind the questions is to see how each candidate reacts and handles himself or herself.  The best questions to uncover job behavior characteristics are experienced-based questions that focus on characteristics outlined in the job description.  Such questions usually begin with something like:  “Tell me of a time when. . . .”  It is also wise to include a few questions about the last employer/employment experience as well as at least one question about what each candidate thinks he or she can bring to the job that is special.

If you like the answers, include those in the “to be interviewed” schedule developed for those selected from the YES pile.   You now should have a comprehensive, appropriately filtered list of “the right people” to interview.

Now that you’ve found the “right people” do some preparation for the interview

The interview and hiring process should be more enjoyable and rewarding and far less frustrating.  To help you sharpen your interviewing skills, which helps you uncover the information you need, It may be helpful to take another look at our September article on interviewing excellence.

For more information about how we can help you with your Human Resources and hiring processes, call us at 888-700-8512, request a proposal or contact us.