Hiring, as we have argued before, should be treated like a zero-tolerance industry. Making strong hiring decisions is crucial to any organization’s success and wrong hires are incredible expensive mistakes that bring down the morale of everybody around them.

So, if we agree on that, what’s the key to hiring good people all the time? Structure. A great organizational hiring structure ensures that no matter who is doing the hiring, there is a very high probability that they will consistently bring on a good fit.

And that means a very high chance your organization will be very successful.

So what does a well-structured hiring process look like?

1.       The Needs Of The Job Are Clearly Defined

There’s an old expression: “if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

In other words, know exactly what you are looking for before you hire someone. And what you are looking for is not someone with six years of experience and a certain degree. What you are really looking for is a person with a certain set of skills – say, for an example, an expert in social media marketing – and a personality that will mesh with the job.

2.       The Screening Process Is Focused On Uncovering A Candidate’s Skills

The goal of the initial screening process should be to determine what skills the candidates have. That is first done just by scanning resumes but, as we all know, resumes can be deceiving and they don’t reveal the true skillset of the applicants.  Hence the importance of doing screening interviews, perhaps best achieved by using a system like VoiceGlance.

It isn’t that candidates’ personalities aren’t revealed in these interviews, they are. But the goal of the screening process should be to find less than five people who you think could do the job really well.

3.       In-Person Interviews Are Culture-Based

If your screening process is strong, the people you bring in for in-person interviews should be well-qualified to do the job. Now, the focus should be on answering this question: is this person going to fit in well with the team? That question can be answered both by traditional interviewing and using more creative methods, such as having the person work with your team for a day.

If the person is qualified and they’d be a good fit, they are almost always going to be a good hire. The last key is that…

4.       The Candidate Really Wants The Job

When a candidate does come in for an interview, it is vital to accurately explain their job duties, explaining both the good points and the bad. This way, the candidate can speak to exactly how they can help your company. More importantly, it is important that they know what they are getting into. If it is something they aren’t going to be happy doing, it is far better for them to drop out before than for them to get into something they hate.

5.         Follow The Process All The Time

The most important step. Organizations often have good systems in place, but then they are not followed in all situations for a variety of reasons – mostly because they are desperate to fill a job quickly – and generally the results are disastrous. If you follow the first four steps on every hire, then there is a high probability you’ll hire the right people. But if you begin to rush decisions and hire out of desperation, the chances of success go down, and the chances of a disastrous hire increase dramatically.

Photo Credit: VoiceGlance