Best Practices: Hiring People

Recruit and Keep the Brightest Stars

Kathy Shwiff

• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780061145575
• eBook ISBN: 9780061738951
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Business General

STAR SEARCH: ATTRACTING TOP PERFORMERS

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“No organization can do better than the people it has.”

—Peter Drucker,
management guru and author
(1909–2005)

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Filling your ranks with good people has never been more important. That’s because your people represent your company to the public; and they’re the ones who will create your success.

If you can get the right people onto your team, and if you then give them the freedom to think and be creative, they can work magic. Yet good people are in short supply. Although universities and business schools around the world are churning out tens of thousands of MBAs every year, the imminent retirement of a whole generation—the 76 million baby boomers—means a wave of positions will be vacant. The competition for the top talent is already stiff. Within the next ten years, it will become even more intense.

Whether the person you’re hiring is a junior software developer or a senior project manager, a civil engineer or a newsletter editor, a hotel maid or a registered nurse, getting a star performer to notice the position you want to fill, to come in and talk to you, and to choose you over other companies demands increasing skill.

Smart managers need to develop every possible resource. They need to build networks of good people they can tap into when they have jobs to fill. They need to develop skills among interns. They need to raise their firm’s visibility so that people will come to them. They need to discover talent in every corner of their communities, focusing on groups of people who may be underemployed—among them women, many of whom drop out of the workforce at some point in their careers and subsequently find it difficult to return. Managers need to create a diverse workforce to benefit from the competitive edge that results when diverse approaches to problems and diverse points of view are adopted.

Having invested so much time in developing talent pools, smart managers will need to figure out how to bring these stars in house. They’ll need to respond quickly to applicants via phone calls, run intelligent interviews, and learn to sell the candidate on their company.

Searches are expensive, both in time and money, not to mention the productivity lost while a job sits vacant. So you need to do whatever it takes to make your hiring process quicker and more effective. It’s simply good business.

The journey from deciding to bring the best possible people on board to actually making the hire can be long and difficult. It is punctuated by challenges: writing a clear job description, choosing the most effective (and most cost-effective) advertising medium, and crafting your listing so that it appeals to the kind of individual you hope to find. Although some people wait until they have a job opening to pursue candidates, it’s a good idea to be on the lookout year-round. You may want to do some active recruiting, for instance. You will definitely want to build a list of people you might some day want to work with, so that you’ll have a roster of people to interview as soon as the need arises.

DESCRIBING THE JOB

Let’s suppose that you’re losing a key member of your department. Or perhaps you’ve met a talented young person who you’d like to find a way to bring on board. One of the first things you need to tackle before you set the hiring process in motion is the job description.

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The BIG Picture

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PERSONALITY AND PASSION ARE A PLUS

When reviewing the basic requirements for a job, remember that character traits and personality matter as much as skills. Every hiring manager emphasizes a different set of attributes that he or she values.

Jack Welch, who led General Electric as CEO for 21 years and spent about half his time hiring and coaching his staff, valued integrity above all else. To him, it was essential that the people around him could be relied upon to tell the truth and to keep their word. Next, he looked for intelligence, curiosity, breadth of knowledge, maturity, and the ability to handle success as well as stress and setbacks with aplomb. Also important to him were people with positive energy, people who “thrive on action and relish change.” He prized the capacity to motivate and energize others, “to inspire them to take on the impossible.” He wanted people who could get a job done and people with what he called “edge”—that is, the courage to make hard decisions. Finally, he sought passion—“a heart-felt, deep, and authentic excitement about work.”

Consider your company’s mission and goals, and determine what personal qualities are necessary to help you work toward them. Then tailor your hiring process to uncover people with those qualities.

Source: Winning by Jack Welch (Collins, 2005).

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If you’re starting with an existing position, pull the most recent description of the position held by your departing employee and determine whether it accurately describes the functions of the job. If the text hasn’t been updated for a while, it may well need dusting off, especially if your company has had any reorganizations since it was last revisited.

Give careful thought to what the person in that position actually did, day in and day out. What were the key tasks that the individual performed? What are your expectations as to productivity and quality? Is this a back-office kind of job, offering little contact with the public, or does the person in this job interact with customers, clients, or vendors outside the company?

What experience and skills are required to do the job? What training and education? What are the challenges and opportunities the job offers? Enlist the help of your departing employee or another employee in the same role when gathering all this information.

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Outside the Box

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TEN STEPS TO EXCELLENT HIRES

Harvey B. Mackay founded Mackay Envelope Company at the age of 26 and proceeded to build it into a $100 million company. The following ten-step program for filling jobs is based on Mackay’s own process for hiring executives.

1. Candidate is first interviewed by human resources.
2. Managers company-wide conduct follow-up interviews. These managers then compare notes and make recommendations.
3. Hiring manager meets with candidate for a 30-minute interview. Midway through, he or she asks for the name of a mentor or influential teacher who knows the candidate well and calls this person.
4. Hiring manager follows up with a 30-minute phone conversation to determine the candidate’s ability to project and communicate by telephone.
6. Industry people who may have come into contact with the candidate are called.
7. Candidate is interviewed at home.
8. Hiring manager socializes with the candidate and his or her significant other at a concert, theater, or movie. This step is especially important for salespeople, who may be seeing customers socially.
9. Peers in noncompeting companies are briefly interviewed.
10. Hiring manager has a conversation with the in-house person who is most knowledgeable in the candidate’s skill area—controller, purchasing agent, or the like.
11. Company psychologist or human resources person is consulted.

This rigorous process not only yields staff members who are a good fit—and who stay for years—it also enforces a sense of pride among existing staff at being part of such a select company.

SOURCE: Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive (Reissue Edition) by Harvey B. Mackay (Collins, 2005).

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If you’re going to add to your head count, brainstorm the many tasks and roles you anticipate that an employee may undertake in this new job. Again, consider your productivity and quality expectations.

It’s vital to have an accurate job description so that you and your new employee have a shared understanding of what’s expected of him or her. Moreover, writing a job description helps you clarify your thinking, set pay ranges, plan interview questions, and—after you have made the hire—evaluate the new employee’s performance.

When you craft the job description, you may also become aware of other job descriptions in your department that need revision.

The Basics of Job Descriptions

A good job description covers all the parameters of the position. It is detailed and specific, but also loose enough to allow the employee to grow with the job. Be concise and use language that can be readily understood by the general public. Don’t use idiosyncratic terms specific to your organization, or mention internal divisions that change frequently or wouldn’t be readily recognized outside the organization.

The job description should include these elements: the title of the position, a job summary, a list of key responsibilities, a statement of the minimum job requirements, certifications or licenses needed, physical requirements, a disclaimer, and details of hours and salary ranges.

The job title you post should ideally be a shortened version of the actual title—“graphic designer,” as opposed to “graphic designer for educational book division.” You can fill in the details later in your ad. The title should also reflect the various duties of the position, “filing clerk/typist,” for instance, and specify a level of skill required, “junior accountant” or “lead programmer.” Don’t inflate job titles to make them sound more important—opt for “assistant librarian” rather than “information resource technician.” Avoid any titles that might refer to age, gender, or race.

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CASE FILE

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RETENTION BEGINS WITH THE RIGHT PERSONALITY

In a 2005 National Restaurant Association study, restaurateurs called recruiting and retaining employees their biggest challenge. Not surprising, considering that the median length of employment for food-service workers is less than two years—half that of other industries.

Managers at Nick’s Pizza & Pub in suburban Chicago have learned that instilling a positive attitude can make all the difference. They believe that while they can teach applicants how to do a job, candidates’ personalities can’t be changed. Once hired, all Nick’s employees go through four days of paid orientation.

Rudy Miick, founder of Miick & Associates, a restaurant consulting company helping Nick’s with staffing issues, says, “If we raise the bar of expectations, tell them clearly what’s expected, treat them with respect, and train them well, we end up with a waiting line of people trying to get in the door.”

Source: “Being the Boss” by Karen Springer, Newsweek.com (August 5, 2005).

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The job summary should provide the basic requirements of the job; it can be concise or go into greater detail depending on the space available.

Focus on the key responsibilities of the job, listing the ones you feel are most critical and at which a desirable candidate will excel. Use action verbs, such as “implements” or “oversees” at the start of each item, and also explain where and how often tasks are to be done. Include the range of responsibilities, including financial and budgetary ones, and be sure to mention if the job includes supervisory responsibilities.

Indicate what the minimum job requirements are for ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• STAR SEARCH: ATTRACTING TOP PERFORMERS
• INTERVIEWING
• WELCOME ABOARD
• Off and Running
• Sources
• Recommended Reading
• Searchable Terms
• About the Author
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher