Have you ever heard that we form an impression of a person in the first 5 seconds? How accurate can that impression actually be? What information can truly be gathered about an individual in 5 seconds? Well, the 5 second rule is based on scores of scientific studies in Social Psychology.
Now, apply that to a job interview situation. Most applicants, regardless of actual qualification for a role, have been practicing, have been coached, in short, they’ve rehearsed as if for an acting role. What you are actually witnessing, especially in the first 5 seconds, is an individual’s acting ability. You are seeing only their “impression management” skills. On the flip side, you are also very likely to see a candidate who gets nervous for an interview and doesn’t respond well to your questioning. After all, job interviews are inherently situations where one goes to be judged. What you are very unlikely to see is any actual or useful indication of how the individual will perform on the job. That is, of course, unless you ensure that you include objective procedures in your hiring process.
Objective procedures are those that can be quantified, or counted. These are procedures that can be instituted and easily taught and are to be used in the same way each time your organization hires new people. They are tremendously useful in accounting for that human error factor that causes a measurable amount of money when one accounts for loss due to a bad hire. However, what often goes overlooked is the overall disruption to the company when the wrong candidate is selected, which can be enormous. Whether the incorrect hire decides to leave on their own or must be terminated, there are negative effects. Consider the amount of time when that individual is lacking in productivity, is tardy or absent, or even worse, is just plain disruptive! These are just a few ways in which your company will suffer by holding on to an antiquated and damaging unstructured, subjective hiring process.
So, here a few simple components you might want to include in your structured hiring process:
1. Have a checklist for your resume screeners
- Include simple job requirements that are your absolute cut-offs such as education, years of experience, types of experience, years in industry, etc.
- When a candidate has a certain number of “checks”, they can be moved to the next phase of the process
- This is quantifiable and removes the “human error” or subjective error possibilities
2. Develop a Behavioral Event Interview Guide
- Include a method for scoring responses so that you can ensure quantifiability
- Include questions that will allow candidates to describe actual instances from their experience that you can apply to the role you are interviewing them for
- Further limit the possibility of interviewer subjectivity by having more than one person interview each candidate
3. Incorporate a Personality Assessment
- Including a valid and reliable personality assessment will help you to see how a candidate will fit into your organization’s culture
- You will be given an indication of their approach to work
- You will see how to work with the individual, what motivates them, and how to best manage them
- ECI actually studies roles in practice and develops a “job footprint” that shows hiring managers what top performers in your organization look like
Quantifiable, objective procedures also protect you and your company. There are those people out there who make their living by suing companies who didn’t hire them. Companies who leave themselves liable are by and large those who don’t have structured hiring processes. By documenting each step and being able to demonstrate that all candidates go through the same process, you are protecting yourself from costly lawsuits. Also, by being able to show that you quantified, or scored each candidate, you can show why you hired one candidate and not another. If you think you are too small to worry, you should know that most employment and hiring law policies apply to companies of 15 people or more.
For more information on structured hiring processes, visit our website or better yet, give us a call!
