IMPORTANCE OF MAKING SOLID HIRING DECISIONS
One of your defining acts as a supervisor/manager is demonstrating the ability to hire value-added members for your team. Hiring the right candidate not only makes your job easier, but it also has a significant effect on your entire work team. Hiring a new employee who is relatively low maintenance and who easily integrates into the team will make a positive impact on the morale of your department. Hiring a new employee who begins showing early signs of drama, attendance issues, and productivity problems can be an immediate morale killer. Your team is counting on you to make a selection that will enhance the work environment, not detract from it.
One other element of making a solid selection for your team is the impact it has on your credibility. The team needs to see you making solid business decisions that are consistent with their individual success and the success of the team. Bringing someone into the fold that is totally out of sync with the rest of the team sends a strong message that you are not a credible leader. With your credibility being a key element to your success, you cannot afford this type of mistake, especially in the early days.
THE HIRING PROCESS
Today you come into work, the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the coffee is brewed to perfection. Suddenly, an employee comes to you and says the one thing that turns your perfect day into ‘panicsville’, “Please consider this my two week notice”. Holy crap, just when things seemed to be cruising on auto-pilot, someone has the audacity to ruin your life by finding a better job!!
Now is when you need to pull yourself together and declare yourself the official project manager for this incredibly crucial and life-impacting assignment. And ‘life-impacting’ is not an understatement. Choosing the right candidate will make your life a whole lot easier; choosing the wrong candidate may be a life lesson you won’t soon forget!
The rationale behind approaching turnover like a project is due to the various phases of the hiring process. If you don’t set deadlines for each, time will get away from you and months will go by before you are getting around to making a decision. This can be devastating to both the productivity and morale in your department.
Although every company does it a bit differently, the typical hiring flow is as follows:
- Approval of the job requisition- In most companies, you are required to get senior management and HR approval before adding a new position or replace an existing position. The reason for this is that the management team wants to be able to control and leverage payroll expenses. If times are tight or business is slow, they may choose to freeze job requisitions. Due to this approval process, you can easily add a few days to a few weeks onto the timeframe it will take to begin looking for a replacement.
- Sourcing candidates- Once the job requisition is approved, you or your HR team must start looking for candidates. Depending on the job market, or the skill set you are looking for, this can take anywhere from a couple days to a few weeks. Remember, the candidates need to be contacted and screened before an interview is typically scheduled. There goes a few more days.
- Scheduling the interviews- When it comes to scheduling interviews, you need to make sure you have a clear calendar. NEVER try and squeeze in an interview between meetings. Inevitably, something runs long and you end up scrambling to try and cram in a quick interview, and this is where things start to go south! You also want to make sure you are seeing a wide variety of candidates so you have a solid pool to choose from. Although your initial reaction may be that you don’t have time to interview a bunch of people, you don’t have the luxury not to! You are short-changing yourself and your team if you only interview a couple of candidates. So accounting for the adequate time it takes to interview multiple candidates, add at least a week to your timeframe.
- The second interview- Many organizations require that supervisors pass along the final candidates to their manager for a final interview. I am actually a huge fan of this concept, because it creates a great avenue for managers to provide feedback to their supervisors on the interviewing process. This extra step, of course, adds several more days to the process.
- The selection- After interviewing a number of candidates, you are expected to pick the one most qualified individual for the position. If you have conducted thorough interviews, and taken good notes, you should have a relatively easy time selecting the best candidate for the job. Although you never really know what you are getting until the candidate is in the job for a few months, taking quality time with the process should mitigate a number of the risks that are inherent in the hiring process. If you don’t procrastinate, you should be able to make a decision within a day or two of your final interview.
- A job offer- Once the decision is made, you or your HR representative must reach out to the candidate with an offer. If the offer is immediately accepted, you often have to wait several weeks while your new hire works out their two week notice at their other job. If the candidate balks at the offer and makes a request for additional pay, vacation, etc., this can often add another few days onto the process.
SUMMARY
Spending quality time preparing for an effective interview and selection process is absolutely critical if you want to add to the talent in your team. Failing to maintain the integrity of this process will surely lead you to selecting a less than acceptable candidate. You will then spend countless weeks, months and possibly years dealing with the drama and poor performance of this employee. Don’t shortchange yourself or your team by skimping on this process. You will need every moment of the day to provide inspired leadership to your team, not babysit for an undeserving employee!!
Tune in tomorrow for more tips on effective interviewing and selection!
Thanks for reading everyone!!
Toodle from Twaddle
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