Making your hiring decision should be the easiest part of the entire staffing process. With all the data in hand, choosing the right person becomes obvious.
Your choice is dependent on having good data. The more data, the easier the decision. Most hiring decisions are difficult because either you don’t have the right data or not enough data.
The decision process begins with the data gathering process. This includes every step starting without he first contact with the candidate. Here are just a few of the data gathering steps:
- Resume/CV/Application
- Phone Screen
- Testing and Assessment
- Face To Face Interview
- Second Interviews
- Multiple Interviews
- Reference Check
- Background Check
At each step you are gathering data to help you answer one question:
Will this person be successful in my job?
Your job is not to figure the person out. It is not to find out what makes the person tick. It is not to get in the person’s head.
To predict success, you need to determine how the person will handle the tasks and situations they will face on your job. With that knowledge in hand, predicting success is straight forward.
Using the behavioral model, you are operate under the principle that past behavior predicts future behavior. The more examples you can get of how the person behaved in similar situations, the more accurate your prediction of success.
Once you have the examples, follow this easy process to make the hiring decision.
First, evaluate your critical job requirements one at a time. Don’t try to complete an overall evaluation. Break the evaluation into small manageable chinks.
Next, for each requirement, look for examples that support the person behaving in a way consistent with success on your job. The more examples you find, the more certain you can be of your evaluation.
Finally, the most efficient actual grades to use are, meets the requirement, exceeds the requirement and does not meet the requirement. Think of the grades as check, plus and minus.
This is a simple yet effective grading method. It eliminates the confusion and ambiguity of a numbered system where no one really knows the difference between a 6 and a 7.
Confronted with a candidate with all checks and pluses, your choice becomes very easy.
In conclusion, gather specific behavioral data of how the person handled the same or similar situations to those they will face on your job. Next, break you decision into a series of smaller more manageable decisions. Evaluate on the basis of meets, exceeds or does not meet.
The better the data you gather in your interview process , the easier the hiring decision is to make.
