The Art of Hiring – Optimising the Interview Process to Attract and Make Better Hires.
Hiring new employees is one of the most important decisions that a company can make. After all, hiring the wrong person can cost a business millions in lost productivity and talent brand destruction.
The employment of new personnel involves several stages, including the interview process. Writing a job description, posting a job, arranging interviews, doing phone interviews, conducting in-person interviews, following up with candidates to keep them engaged till they join you, are all common practices for any employer when seeking to hire an employee.
If the interview process is that critical, then what should you be doing to ensure that you have a strong interview process to attract better hires?
Build your organisation to become a great Talent Brand.
Talent Branding is the process of creating a positive perception about your company in order to attract talent. The need for talent branding is becoming more and more important as the economy becomes increasingly competitive. What does this mean? It means that companies are now looking to create a culture that attracts talented employees, rather than just hiring people who are available at the time of hire.
One school of thought is that harder job interviews actually lead to better job matches – but is this a fact?
It turns out, yes.
It has been found through research that when candidates go through a rigorous interview process they often find that the company places a high value on finding employees who are a good match for their organisation’s culture.
In the most basic terms, it is the culture of a company that determines how it interacts with its prospective employees. In an ideal scenario, a values-driven organisation invests in training their recruiting teams to be open minded, compassionate and empathetic so they can effectively filter great quality candidates from the average ones while being an excellent representation of the brand.
Let us dive into what the stages of an interview process are, and how you can optimise them to ensure you communicate/infuse your Talent Brand in each step;
Broadly, there are five steps in the interview process and this process might vary based on the organisation and the position; some organisations require multiple in-person interviews while others can make a choice after just one. It’s important to take your time, find out about the candidate and ask all of the questions you need to know before making a decision.
#1. Writing a job description
Job descriptions are often the first reference for a prospective employee to visualise if the work that they will get to do in your organisation will be a match for their capabilities.
This often either elevates and excites them to apply immediately or drive them away to seek further validation for your company to be the right employer. Here’s how you infuse Talent Branding in this stage:
- Identify what about your company, your values and culture would excite prospective candidates – call that out. Answer the question – What’s in it for them? Give them a flavour of what it’s like to work with you.
- Explain your expectations for the role from the candidate – Be as detailed/specific as possible. This gives your candidates a perspective of what they would do when they join you and what to avoid to become successful in your company.
- Explain what would be considered a win at the end of 1 year – This helps the candidate visualise a clear career trajectory for growth and career progression
How to Write Creative Job Descriptions:
#2. Posting a job
While creating the JD is a great first step, an equally important step is to increase the size and strength of your candidate pipeline. This requires for the organisation to clearly plan and define a distribution list of potential platforms/sources where you would post your job descriptions.
This decision to choose which channel is right should be based on where your target talent is most active online/offline and where they consume the content that helps them with potential job opportunities.
Here’s how you infuse Talent Branding in this stage:
- Based on the channels of presence, focus on raising your brand’s visibility and engagement in that platform. For example, If LinkedIn is where your target talent is most active, then build a presence for your organisation, showcase what its like to work with you, share a variety of content from your leadership and your employees consistently and engage with your prospective talent. This will allow you to pique their interest to engage with you and then apply.
- Showcase other employees that are working on the same/similar functions and how a day in their lives feels like. Use engaging formats like videos and shorts to convey a crisp story.
- Build and showcase how success outcomes are rewarded within that function – This gives them a sense of recognition knowing that good work will be rewarded with recognition and not just more work.
#3. Screening your pipeline
Once you have showcased what it’s like to work with you, the involvement of Talent Branding doesn’t end there.
You can use it as a powerful tool to screen and filter the candidates in your pipeline just by creating a simple matrix of the parameters that matter to you for each role that aligns with the brand’s core values and overall culture.
Here’s how you infuse Talent Branding in this stage:
- Categorise your candidates into A, B and C. Filter them based on the parameters that are important to you as an organisation – core values, culture and skillset match.
- Share clear feedback from each interviewer with the candidates, so they are aware as to why they did/did not make the cut.
- Identify and draw out clear ways to help your B and C category candidates to become category A. Give them access to some of your learning tutorials and indicate a willingness to invite them to a shortened interview process.
#4: Arranging & Scheduling interviews
Start by re-iterating your company’s culture, values, mission and JD so candidates are clear on what they are sign-ing up for. Interviewing potential hires with this knowledge will allow you to ask more insightful questions that are relevant for their skillset and personality while also ensure there is a company values and a cultural fit.
- Ensure that you are adequately equipping the candidates to meet the requirements of the interview process by sharing all the necessary direction for a seamless process.
- After clearing a certain threshold in the interview process, invite the candidates to interact and network with you working team. This allows both parties to know the kind of folks that they are going to get to work with.
#5: The decision
Once you are certain that the selected candidates are a great wholesome fit, invest in the process of bringing them upto speed with clear communications on the role, the joining date, their reporting details and everything needed for them to get started with your company.
- Share a nicely worded email/letter to their parents, indicating how proud and happy you are to have them join your team and call out some of the key reasons why you chose to hire them. This sets you up for goodwill with the family of the candidates.
- Once your candidates have accepted the offer to join you, create a process to keep them engaged till they join you – This could be in the form of inviting them for company events, sharing knowledge, looping them into fun activities. All this to give them a feeling of what it’s like to be part of their team.
Look at other steps you can take to minimize candidate ghosting.