Recruiting and Hiring - 3 Essential Steps to take your process from GOOD to GREAT

In the last post, I spoke about the "Employee Lifecycle" mindset in regards to HR - basically that we should look at the entire employee experience from Hire to Retire when evaluating our HR processes.

"Employee Lifecycle" = Recruiting > Hiring > Onboarding > Training > Professional Growth > Retirement

In this post, we'll focus on the first portion of the cycle - Recruiting and Hiring. First, let's look at how we should apply the Employee Lifecycle mindset to this essential first step. In regards to Recruiting and Hiring, there are 3 main questions that we want to answer:

1) What qualities, skills, and/or personality traits does it take to be successful throughout the entire employee lifecycle? Which are not important?

2) How do I gauge applicants' skills / qualities / traits?

3) How do I take my recruiting and hiring process to the next level?

Sounds easy enough, huh? Before you say "Well THAT was nothing revolutionary!" realize that this post isn't titled "How to set up a recruiting process." Although these questions seem basic, what I've found through countless meetings with hiring managers, business owners, and HR administrators is that most companies only have a shallow understanding of the questions above.

When it comes to a deeper understanding of recruiting and hiring processes, you truly have to have the Employee Lifecycle mindset - what type of person will not only be a good fit in the organization today, but will be able to succeed in the long term. Think of it this way, using a salesperson as an example:

Will this employee be able to easily learn the training information and have a solid understanding of our products and services, ramp up and create a database quickly, appeal to and communicate with our target market, grow within the organization, create lasting relationships, and add value to the organization that will help us reach our goals as an organization?

If you are already considering all of those questions, then read no further. But to any remaining readers, the goal of this post is to break these 3 questions down into easily digestible steps that will help you better identify your target employees and traits, effectively gauge those traits, and then adjust the program accordingly - because when it comes to recruiting, there is ALWAYS going to be room for improvement.

Step 1 : Identify necessary skills, qualities, and personality traits that will lead to successful employees at each stage of the Employee Lifecycle.

You heard me - the ENTIRE Employee Lifecycle. If you've ever hired a salesperson because you had a few drinks with them and they were likeable, friendly, and you thought to yourself, "I would buy from this person," then you know exactly what I mean. In most cases, we base the recruiting process on very shallow traits and characteristics such as agreeableness, friendliness, appearance (this happens naturally), and answers to very general questions - "Where would you like to be in 5 years?" "What do you know about our company?" "What motivates you?"

The problem : These employees often are liked, well groomed, fit into the culture. HOWEVER, by not digging deeper, we often hire employees who we quickly realize are not a good fit past the introductory stage of employment.

In order to hire better employees, we first have to establish what makes an employee successful PAST the first company happy hour:

What values / qualities / personality traits / intelligence level / skills does it take to be SUCCESSFUL in the long term?

I would suggest taking a look at your top performers - what skills do they possess that set them apart as superstars? For us, it is the following:

• Highly Important: High level of intelligence (this has shown to be directly linked to ability to understand our technology products), Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Openness, Stability / Consistency, Ability to Handle Stress, Ability to Learn / Natural Curiosity
• Also important: Consideration, Efficiency, Highly Motivated / Strive for Achievement, Need for Recognition, Teamwork, Creative Thinking, Self Confidence, Integrity, Commitment to Work / Dedication
• Less Important: Dependability (Salespeople are known to take risks!), Leadership Orientation (not all need to be managers / leaders in our office), Even Temperament (we have some divas... I may fall into that category)

Step 2 : Build a process to identify the presence (or lack of) these skills within candidates.

BASIC: Build a spreadsheet - this can be as easy as listing the skills in one column and then ranking the candidate from 1-5 according to how well they present these skills during the interviewing process. Simply asking yourself "Does this candidate really have all the skills I listed as essential?" will have an immense impact on your recruiting process.

COMPREHENSIVE: Use an assessment, such as the Wonderlic Assessments. At DPS, we conduct 3 tests: Personal Characteristics Inventory, Motivation Potential Assessment, and a basic Cognitive Assessment. These tests provide a deep understanding of each candidate, and you simply have to determine which skills are most important and what scores applicants must reach to pass (much more easily said than done - see step 3).

During each step of the interviewing process, you should be testing candidates for these skills.

For example, we often bring candidates in for a "last round interview" and throw something in something unexpected - a surprise cold calling session. This is a great indication of how extraverted they are, how they handle pressure and stress, how coachable they are and willing to learn, as well as how they present themselves to and communicate with potential clients.

Step 3 : Realize that it is only a MISTAKE if you don't learn from it. With each hire, adjust accordingly .

When it comes to recruiting and hiring, no company is the same, and there is no perfect process. You will still inevitably hire candidates who are not a good fit and some turnover is always natural. However, with each hire as well as with your current and past staff members, constantly think:

"What worked? What didn't? What skills led to success or failure? What could I have done differently?"

You may get more information from employees who have FAILED in the position. From our experience, we realized that intelligence was not being focused on as heavily as it should be, as well as natural curiosity and eagerness to learn. Also, the traits that these applicants scored VERY highly on - agreeableness, cooperation, friendliness - were not as important to success within the position. We adjusted our recruiting process accordingly, and recently hired a candidate who is quickly excelling.

In order to take your recruiting and hiring process from good to great, you need to follow ALL of these steps - identify what qualities lead to success or failure, build a recruiting process that identifies and ranks candidates based on those qualities, and never stop asking yourself, "How can this be better? What did I learn?"

What's next? Once you start recruiting the right people, HOW DO YOU GET THEM UP TO SPEED? (Onboarding / Training Focus). Look for this post next week!