Everyone wins when you get the right person in the right job. Teams get better employees that help them reach their goals and the individuals hired enjoy their work and live better lives. When you successfully find the ideal job candidate, it's worth the extra time to get right even if it takes more time.
Important Attributes From This Description
- Hard working
- Team player but also works well independently
- Innovative
- Detail-oriented
- Creative
Though simple, this process still requires a bit of critical thought. For example, does it matter if you are looking for someone who enjoys working in a team environment, or just can work in a team environment? The clarification may seem minor, but it could prove crucial to helping you find the right applicant later on.
Step 2.5 - Group similar attributes together (Optional)
There’s a good chance your list of chosen attributes will be long. This is not always a bad thing because your ideal employee will have lots of positive traits. If so, it can be helpful to group similar attributes together. Continuing with our pest control job example, here is how this could look:
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Skills: Customer Service, Team Leadership
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Culture Fit: Humble, Team Player, Hard Working, Creative
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Feasibility: Salary Range, Start Date, Location
Now that you're organized, decide how you’re going to identify these traits in your applicants.
Step 3 - Identify questions you can ask applicants without talking to them
There are many things you can measure before you ever have to look at a resume or talk to an applicant. Pre-screening questions can be a very useful tool for measuring these types of things. Many applicant tracking and recruiting systems, including third-party vendors can do this for you.
Read through your list of attributes, and for each one ask, “Can I measure this through a questionnaire?” Here are some examples:
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Sales Experience - You want someone with at least 3 years of experience, as well as someone who isn’t too senior. So you can ask: “How many years of sales experience do you have?”
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Location - If the person needs to be in a specific place to perform their job duties, you can ask: “Are you currently living in or willing to relocate to xxxxx location for this job?”
Remember: A questionnaire can't measure everything. This is a screening step that helps you spend more time on the qualified applicants and less time on those that aren't a good fit.
Step 4 - Find interview questions for your important attributes
After the initial screen, further measure the important attributes in your applicants through interviewing. There are pros and cons to interviews, but they are still a great way to determine an applicant’s fit.
To know what interview questions to ask, go back to your list of attributes. If you feel good about any that the screening questions have already measured, cross those off. The remaining attributes need to be measured through interviews.
To find great interview questions for these remaining attributes, do a little research to find specific questions that measure those traits. There are many resources on the web to help you with this task. Career sites like Indeed, Glassdoor, and Monster have long lists of commonly used interview questions.
One of the strongest online resources is Hiremeasures.org, a growing library of interview questions that Journeyfront has made accessible to everyone. Search for interview questions that measure your chosen attribute, then select several that you feel capture the nuances of the attributes for the job(s) you are hiring for.
Step 5 - Group your questions into interviews
You often won’t have time in a single interview to measure all the attributes you’re looking for. For this reason, it’s a good idea to group the questions based on their subject matter. This allows you to focus on different attributes for each stage of the interview process. The most important questions get asked first to make sure there is enough time to cover what's most important.
This method also provides structure that helps whoever might be asking the questions so each applicant is measured the same way. For example, you could separate any questions that measure technical skills into an interview given by someone qualified to assess those skills. You also might group cultural attributes and questions together so team members can evaluate how an applicant could fit on the team.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer here, so do this in a way that works best for you. Just remember to keep the interviews to a reasonable time frame.
Step 6 - Put it all together
Now that you have your interview questions grouped the way you want to, bring it all together. Gather everything you've written in steps 1-5 and put it all into a single document or location. This will give everyone on the team a way to see and learn the process, which will also help them execute better. Whether it's a recruiter, a hiring manager or a team member, understanding this process is important for everyone involved in the hiring process. Like you, they will know exactly what to look for and how to screen for the right people.
This step ensures reliability and quality across all applicants and interviewers. Interviewers will feel more prepared to give each applicant a great experience and a fair, consistent interview that leads to good hiring choices. You'll have a great plan to hire right every time.
Hiring is important and you should take time to do it right.
This process might seem tedious at first, but spending more time at the beginning will pay off big in the long run. Plus, like anything, the more you do this, the easier it gets. Your confidence and skill in identifying the right attributes for a job will also grow. Soon, you’ll be able to easily create the ideal screening plan for every job you need filled.
Now go forth and hire right!
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