General Principles

• Although the hiring process for each position is handled a little differently, we want to be respectful towards job seekers by letting them know as soon as possible if we will be moving forward with their application or not. This means that we should email unsuccessful and under-qualified candidates as soon as we have decided that we won't hire them.
• We should create clear standards for a role and write them down before starting any recruitment. We should have a good idea of what a role will be before we start recruiting.
• Use structured interviewing. We want to avoid using unstructured interviews. Instead, we should use structured/standardized interviews. Create a list of questions for each role and each level of interview (initial, competency, etc) with job applicants so that all candidates are evaluated in the same way.
  • A relevant excerpt from Work Rules!: "Tied with tests of general cognitive ability are structured interviews (26 percent), where candidates are asked a consistent set of questions with clear criteria to assess the quality of responses. Structured interviews are used all the time in survey research. The idea is that any variation in candidate assessment is a result of the candidate’s performance, not because an interviewer has higher or lower standards, or asks easier or harder questions. There are two kinds of structured interviews: behavioral and situational. Behavioral interviews ask candidates to describe prior achievements and match those to what is required in the current job (i.e., “Tell me about a time …?”). Situational interviews present a job-related hypothetical situation (i.e., “What would you do if …?”). A diligent interviewer will probe deeply to assess the veracity and thought process behind the stories told by the candidate. Structured interviews are predictive even for jobs that are themselves unstructured. We’ve also found that they cause both candidates and interviewers to have a better experience and are perceived to be most fair.89 So why don’t more companies use them? Well, they are hard to develop: You have to write them, test them, and make sure interviewers stick to them. And then you have to continuously refresh them so candidates don’t compare notes and come prepared with all the answers. It’s a lot of work, but the alternative is to waste everyone’s time with a typical interview that is either highly subjective, or discriminatory, or both."
• We want to create graded rubrics for each role we hire for so that we can evaluate candidates against specific criteria rather than using general impressions
  • A relevant excerpt from Work Rules!: "For each component, the interviewer has to indicate how the candidate did, and each performance level is clearly defined. The interviewer then has to write exactly how the candidate demonstrated their general cognitive ability, so later reviewers can make their own assessment. Upon hearing about our interview questions and scoring sheets, the same skeptical friend blurted, “Bah! Just more platitudes and corporate speak.” But think about the last five people you interviewed for a similar job. Did you give them similar questions or did each person get different questions? Did you cover everything you needed to with each of them, or did you run out of time? Did you hold them to exactly the same standard, or were you tougher on one because you were tired, cranky, and having a bad day? Did you write up detailed notes so that other interviewers could benefit from your insights? A concise hiring rubric addresses all these issues because it distills messy, vague, and complicated work situations down to measurable, comparable results. For example, imagine you’re interviewing someone for a tech-support job. A solid answer for “identifies solutions” would be, “I fixed the laptop battery like my customer asked.” An outstanding answer would be, “I figured that since he had complained about battery life in the past and was about to go on a trip, I’d also get a spare battery in case he needed it.” Applying a boring-seeming rubric is the key to quantifying and taming the mess."
• It is recommended that we hire by committee. A manager can say "no" to any candidate, but if they find someone they want to hire, they alone cannot give a final “yes” - they must pass the candidate onto a hiring committee for review.
• Review interviewer best practices.
• Develop an applicant feedback survey to be sent to job candidates after interviews.
  • We want to do this in order to better understand candidates’ experiences in the hiring process, regardless of whether they received a job offer. We should use this feedback to improve the process.

Recruiting & Hiring Strategies

In hiring, a salary is not the only method to attract a candidate. We should try to use all seven job rewards to attract and retain A players. When you are writing job descriptions, speaking to candidates, and extending offers, think of how you can use these factors to convince people that they want to work here. Things that reinforce people include:

1. Social (recognition of a job well done)
2. Personal Growth
3. Job Control
4. Status
5. Economic
6. Job Environment
7. Naturally Occurring (motivators like feel of satisfaction and accomplishment etc.)

Other good techniques and strategies for more effective hiring and recruiting can be gained from the following resources:

• re:Work
• Managing Unconscious Bias
• Don't use brainteasers