11 Mar Three Tips for More Effective Interviews
Hiring is one of the most challenging processes for any company, and that process is only getting harder.
As of January, the U.S. unemployment rate is just 3.7%, meaning the vast majority of workers looking for jobs are able to choose the opportunities that align with their values and wants, from cultural fit and salary to job duties and benefits.
In fact, a recent Robert Half survey found that only 36% of workers plan to look for a new role in the first half of 2024, a notable drop from 49% last year.
So in a time full of uncertainty, how can you improve your company’s hiring and retention processes to help find the right candidates? Here are three tips from Talent Suite to implement more effective interviews:
1) Know exactly what each seat on your team requires today
The question of “What do we need from someone in this role?” may feel like an obvious one. But it’s not an answer that everyone has readily available, and it’s not always something that’s reconsidered often enough.
Before even making a job post, a good team should take a hard look at the position they’re hiring for and understand exactly what the organization needs from it today. . How has the company and this particular position changed since the last time you wrote a job description? Have new initiatives, projects or clients changed what you’ll need from this person?
Often, companies fail to do their due diligence at this step of the process, and find themselves realizing too late that just because some of this position’s duties were relevant two years ago doesn’t mean that they still are today.
2) Set tangible and measurable goals for the first year
Too frequently, new employees are left feeling unclear about leadership’s expectations for them, whether those expectations are for the first month or the first year of their time with the company.
To set employees up for success — and to cut down on extremely expensive and disruptive team turnover — it’s critical to clearly convey the goals of a new team member’s first year, along with the ways that they’ll be able to tell if they’re succeeding or falling behind.
However your team chooses to phrase it, you must establish how this employee (and your leaders) will know whether they’ve done a good job and have met expectations. This will typically align with the measurable core competencies of the job, and needs to be an objective, measurable list of expected outcomes.
If you’re not sure exactly what those outcomes look like, it’s a good indicator that you should take a look at your hiring process from the top down.
3) Establish a consistent, standardized process
How many steps are there in your interviewing process? Which team members will be part of that process? Which interview questions will you ask? How will you objectively assess the answers to those questions?
If you don’t immediately have a standardized answer to those inquiries, you need to take a hard look at your process.
When it comes to assessing potential job candidates, you need to have a level playing field. The most important part of the hiring process — and one of the most challenging — is removing the potential for bias.
Candidates should have a consistent process to go from prospect to in-process to hired and onboarded. If that process doesn’t exist, it’s easy for uninformed decisions to be made and for people to slip through the cracks.
These three tips will get you on your way to some kind of improved hiring process, but they aren’t a magical way to nail every hiring and completely eliminate turnover.
Once this baseline is set with these universal tips, there are a variety of ways to enhance the process. If you think your team is on its way, but could benefit from an even greater focus on hiring, feel free to reach out. Talent Suite can help.