Hiring smart

One bad hire can cost your company tens of thousands of dollars. Failure and underperformance strip time, resources, and profits from the bottom line. Multiply that by the number of hiring managers in your organization, and you'll realize that hiring may be one of the riskiest and most costly processes your company engages in. The Deloitte Research Series on Talent Management says disenchanted workers pull down productivity, increase churn, and darken morale to the tune of a whopping $350 billion in the United States alone.

If you're hiring for a critical role in your company, you should be looking at the top 25 percent of the candidate pool. This is a serious challenge that's going to take time and patience. It is important to realize that investing extra time up front to make sure you find the right candidate can pay off in multiples down the road. In books, articles, and placement offices around the country, impatient job seekers are cautioned that the process is going to take longer than they would like it to in most cases, a lot longer. Few employers are quite so candid when hiring for senior positions. Hiring is often accelerated to meet perceptions that the higher level the job, the less time there is to spend without someone in it.

The fact is, most companies fall victim to desperation hiring, that point in time after a top performer leaves the company and work begins to pile up, frustrations begin to rise, and as a result employers begin saying, "We have got to get somebody in here." So they hire "somebody" and three months later they begin to discover that person can't do the job. They just aren't getting it or they aren't fitting in. Does this sound familiar?

If your company is going to make a New Year's resolution it should be to take the time to hire top talent. In order to make that happen you need to make hiring a process. Below are seven critical elements essential to building a great hiring process.

Step 1. Get your team together. Hold a recruiting planning meeting with everyone involved in your hiring process and any team members this position directly affects. Come to an agreement on the basic elements of the team's expectations of this individual's role and where their contributions will be critical.

Step 2. Define the real job. If you want people to be successful, you need to define what success looks like. For your sake and your candidates, you should be able to clearly and precisely define what is expected of them in terms of outcomes and deliverables and within what timeframe for the next 12-18 months. This step will dramatically increase the chances of a successful hire. Setting clear expectations of performance is vastly different than listing the skills, experiences, duties and tasks that standard job descriptions give as a measure of a "qualified"candidate.

Step 3. Develop a compelling marketing statement. Recent polls show that 50 percent of any given workforce is open to a better opportunity if approached with one. Don't bother posting boring, traditional job description online. Describe the opportunities talent want, instead of focusing on your needs. Top talent doesn't need a job ... they already have jobs. They need to be compelled by such an interesting opportunity that they must learn more. Create a bold headline or a challenging question to get attention. Once you drive them into your story, tell them why you're a great company to work for, what your vision is and how they can contribute to the results.

Step 4. Your best people are your best recruiters. Chances are your best people know other great people. Send your compelling marketing statement in an all-company email to notify staff that a position has been posted, give them the details or hold a meeting to tell them you are looking for other great people just like them.

Step 5. Interviewing. The interview process often brings out the worst in interviewers. First impressions, biases, snap judgments and ignoring the candidate's needs to name a few. Interviews need to be a structured process where interviewers are clear about their role and what they're looking for and you should start with verifying that your team is qualified to do this. The real process begins with writing your questions down in advance and using a consistent structure for every interview. We have found five predictors for long-term success that interviewing should focus on and they are: self-motivation, leadership, comparable past performance, job-specific problem solving and adaptability. Failure to probe for these greatly increases the chances your hire won't last 12 months. A key element is to ask for examples each and every time a candidate professes a vague or clouded answer about their knowledge, expertise or experience. Probing a candidate's answers beyond just a superficial level is critical to weeding out exaggerators and embellishers. Take your time. The more time spent, the more relaxed you both become and the better understanding you will both have about the likelihood for their success.

Step 6. After the interview. Use a standardized or structured evaluation tool to help keep you focused on what you heard. Don't fall back on things like "I liked him" or "I think she can do the job." Each interviewer should rate the answers and examples from their questions in the interview and compare them.

Step 7. "Trust but verify." Ronald Reagan's advice remains sage. Once you think you have the pool narrowed down the real work begins. Background and credit checks, references, skills testing, homework assignments, personality assessments, presentations, meeting multiple times and a host of other things can help you determine if they can do what they say they can do. Use them and you'll be glad you did.

The process is simple, but not necessarily easy. It is important to remember that hiring someone fast is not consistent with hiring the right person.

Steve Conine is president of Reno-based Talent Framework and AccuStaff and works with numerous professional companies throughout Nevada on employment-related issues.