In my organization, my people are my top priority. Without them, I can’t provide the level of support or the proper experience that my clients deserve. If I want to provide a great experience to my clients, I have to ensure that the people I hire are the best possible candidates. To accomplish that, I have developed and refined the following process over the years:
1. Automate the resume-gathering process. If you are not new to my posts, you know my biggest pet peeve is when technology companies (aren’t we all) fail to use technology. Anyway, we use a service to manage the introduction of our recruits. The service, Ninjagig, allows us to post one (or more) ads; and allows candidates to apply via an online application, upload their resume, cover letter, and ask them specific questions.
2. Utilize a pre-screening process. My HR rep, Barbara, has a systematic way of reviewing resumes and asking questions during the pre-screen to make sure these folks are on the up and up and should be interviewed by me and my team. Out of all of the questions answered by the candidate, my eyes are drawn to the last paragraph Barbara writes: Should this person be interviewed and why.
3. Ask standard interview questions. Unless your job is mainly interviewing people, you don’t have a process … nobody does. Almost 100% of the people I interview, report back to Barbara and tell me that they were really impressed with the company and wanted to work for us. Why? Because we have a good interview process. Regardless of whether the position is technical or administrative, I provide them with a single sheet of paper with five-to-10 questions. They write out the answers. This allows me to see if they write legibly, if they answer correctly, and if they use their phone to get answers.
Once they are done, I interview them about their previous jobs and ask the same four or five questions. This gives me a snapshot of what their previous jobs were, and how they felt about it and their team, and more importantly, their boss.
Lastly, when my team is done interviewing, we all fill out a standard grading document. That way we are all grading the same components of the person and the interview.
I would love to hear from you about what things you might be doing to hire the best candidates – selfishly, maybe I can tweak my process and make it better. What do you do? Reach out to me and let me know.