Action Insight Inc

Key to these questions is the ability to know if candidates are qualified and then selecting the best of the group. There in lies the difference between hiring warm bodies or hot talent. There are seven basic keys that can help improve hiring decisions.

1. Conduct a job analysis: A job analysis is a significant to defining a profile that is key for determining whether or not a candidate is qualified. Components of a profile should include both technical/ functional expectations and behavioral competencies. One key here is that conducting a job analysis need not take days or weeks to complete. With well thought out tools, a profile should be able to be completed in around an hour.

With for thought, an organization’s mission and strategic objectives can be taken into account when conducting the job analysis and establishing selection criteria.

2. Create a structured, job-related interview: Being able to compare apples to apples is important. A structured interview is key to ensuring that each candidate is measured against the same profile. Making the interview job-related is also a key to ensuring that candidates feel they were given a fair chance to demonstrate what they bring to the party.

3. Use past-event interview questions: You have heard the saying that “a tiger can’t change its stripes”? People develop methods of handling issues based on prior experiences and tend use the same methods over and over. Past-event interview probes focused on the essential competencies necessary for success help interviewers determine whether the tiger in question brings exciting talent or bad habits.

4. Use interview panels: Small team interview panels made up of 2 to 4 interviewers in a casual setting can bring big benefits, including:

• all the interviewers get the answers from the candidate at the same time, hence the candidate doesn’t get to rehearse and improve on the answers,

• interviewers can play off each other with follow-up probes to clarify information, and

• note taking can be less obtrusive and more complete.

5. Control your biases and first impressions: Everyone has biases, yet interviewers must be professional and not let their biases negatively or positively impact the interview. Though that may be hard, it is very important to ensure that good and complete data is gathered for each candidate.

6. Use a rating guide: A consistent set of rating criteria are also important, as is any measurement tool, in maintaining consistency and in looking beyond impressions to the meat of the candidate’s responses and examples.

7. Use consensus rating: In some areas, teamwork does pay off. The value of consensus rating is that when raters come together and rate each competency and the responses the candidate provided, one rater may have recorded in their notes information that could make a difference in the final rating that the others failed to catch. By having a collaborative discussion raters can achieve a more informed decision.

Have raters read the profile’s competency definition, rating guides, and use their notes to rate a candidate’s level of competence.

Finally, managers and anyone else who conducts or participates in interviews has to be trained in the techniques the organization has chosen for conducting interviews. The ability to consistently select talent that will be successful and add value to an organization is a key factor in not wasting valuable resources on hiring ineffective team members.