Is Your Hiring Process Properly Mapped Out?

Mapping out a succinct hiring process is one of the most crucial, yet underrated components of a talent acquisition strategy. Ushering candidates seamlessly through the process can be a major contributor to successfully landing passive, tier-one talent.

We'll review in detail three critical elements to mapping a hiring process:

• Laying the Foundation
• Defining the Hiring Process
• Communicating the Process

Definition: For the purpose of this post, stakeholders are defined as individuals that will directly benefit from the activities of the incoming employee.

Laying the Foundation

Winging an interview process can lead to losing desired candidates or hiring the wrong employees. In contrast, a cohesive process and unified messaging will result in a positive representation of your firm to the candidate pool you intend to attract. Laying the foundation prior to engaging on a search will position your firm for success when evaluating and attracting human capital. The first step is for all internal stakeholders to reach a consensus around three general principles.

Candidate Qualifications

Stakeholders should communicate openly about what the desired results of the new hire will be. From there, qualities and qualifications needed to achieve those results can be agreed upon. Once a consensus is reached, stakeholders will need to decide the best way to identify those qualities.

Identifying Interviewers

Once stakeholders are in agreement on qualifications, it's time to decide on which people in the organization will be involved and in what order. While all stakeholders should be involved, it may be necessary to include others that have a unique ability to identify certain qualifications.

Messaging

Finally, stakeholders will need to agree on how the employment value proposition will be communicated to candidates. Ensuring each interviewer is staying on message is critical to the continuity of the courting process. Having a consensus on the message, and educating all interviewers on how to deliver that message, will ensure high caliber candidates are convinced they can be successful within your organization.

Defining the Hiring Process

After the foundation is laid and general principles are established, a strategy can be formulated around the execution of the hiring process. Considering how your process will unfold, and how it will be perceived by the interviewer ahead of time will ensure disruptive mid-process tweaks are not necessary. Four elements to be defined by stakeholders:

Timeline

There isn't a one size fits all solution to the number of interviews and the length of the interview process. When balancing between lengthy and expedient hiring processes, consider the implications of both.

Too lengthy of a process leads to:

• Loss of interest by the candidate.
• A competing opportunity arising for the candidate.
• The candidate's motivation for change diminishes due to positive changes with their current work environment.

On the other hand, an expedient process poses challenges:

• Incomplete qualification.
• Failure to generate enough interest and excitement needed to entice candidates to join your team.
• An inadequate amount of time for candidates to process, and feel comfortable with the notion of leaving their current company.

Number of Interviewers

Too many interviewers will extend the timeline while too few may result in shortfalls around qualifying and communicating value. Considerations for stakeholders as they determine the number of interviewers include:

• Ensuring proper vetting. Since stakeholders have determined the qualifications needed ahead of time and the best people to vet those qualifications, it should be fairly simple to decide how many people are needed.
• Providing candidates with enough cultural insight to excite them about the company and opportunity. This requires involvement from all stakeholders as they will typically have the most interaction with the new hire. Other people to consider may include members of the executive team and peers. Validating to candidates that your company is a cultural fit for their personalities cannot be understated.
• Enabling decisive action. It's very rare for every interviewer to be in agreement on which candidate to hire. Too many decision influencers will lead to indecision and increase the timeline unnecessarily.

Interview Content

Pre-planning interview content is designed to eliminate the potential for a disconnect between stakeholders and periphery interviewers that are asked to vet candidates.

• To avoid redundancy, each interview should have a defined purpose that stakeholders agree on collectively. Which qualifications will be measured and by whom should be communicated to all interviewers.
• Ensure every person speaking with the candidate is in alignment on how the employment value proposition, and role the candidate is interviewing for, is being communicated.

Internal Collaboration

Every person involved in the interview process should be privy to most, if not all, of the feedback from other interviewers. Even with all the preparation, each candidate and every interview will be different. Communicating situational circumstances internally will ensure nothing slips through the cracks between interviews. A good way to approach this is to create a shared report or scorecard after each interview. Insight to be gained from this can include:

• Verification on whether an interviewer was able to fully qualify the candidate.
• Follow-up questions on specific qualifications can be passed along to the next interviewer if need be.
• Candidate hot buttons can be communicated to the team to ensure they are addressed in subsequent interviews.

Communicating the Process to Candidates

A positive candidate experience naturally increases the chances of attracting talent to your company.

Setting expectations with candidates up-front serves to create the feeling of an inclusive environment on day 1. You are showing the prospect a cultural trait (inclusiveness) of your organization that is highly desirable. It also ensures that candidates don't feel as if they are navigating uncharted territory as they progress through the interview process.

Additional benefits to communicating the process with candidates:

• If there is a perception that the interview process is dragging, with no end in sight, it will lead to frustration. Even if the process is likely to be long, sharing the steps with candidates up-front serves to maintain candidate engagement.
• When the interview process communicated to candidates is executed properly, it creates a positive impression of collaboration and a team environment.
• A deterrence is created against stakeholders deviating from the process.

We look forward to guiding your organization as you expand your team. Please contact us for a consultation on building your hiring strategy and mapping out your interview processes.