How To Make A Hiring Decision

If filling a vacant position with the most suitable candidate was easy, no company would have to worry about the astronomical cost of a bad hire, which can go as high as $240,000—yes, that high! Moreso, do you know as many three in four employers admit to hiring the wrong person for a job role?

If you are responsible for hiring and infusing new blood into the system, you must be aware of the burden all too well. We get it! Recruiting the right person is not always easy. You want to employ someone who will thrive at your company and stay around for longer. Honestly, a lot is riding on your decision, requiring you to take your job seriously.

How to make a successful hiring decision?

At the end of the day, you do not want your decision to have grave consequences. How can you ensure that you choose the best person for the job and your company? Fret not - we wrote this entire article about making the right hiring decision. By following these handy tips:

1. Review the job description

Before you advertise for a vacancy, ensure the job description covers all the key points you are looking for in your applicants. Do not recycle an old description and ignore how the hiring department has changed or grown since it was written.

The copy should include the qualities that made the exiting person to hold that job successful. Besides technical skills, it should highlight the soft skills, such as the ability to work collaboratively and handle a conflict.

The whole point of hiring is to get someone on-board who adds values to the team and department and not just increases the headcount. Struggling to draft the perfect copy? Check out our extensive library of job description templates for more than 200 roles!

2. Think out-of-the-box when sourcing applicants

Besides the obvious platforms, like LinkedIn, or job boards like Monster and Indeed, look for niche channels where you can hire for specific job positions. For instance, GitHub is ideal for connecting with developers. On the other hand, Behance is an excellent place to find designers and artists.

You can also take help of the LinkedIn X-ray search to do Boolean queries for suitable candidates. In offline recruitment methods, industry meets and hiring fairs can help you promote your company and current job openings.

Another thing you can do is take an active approach and consider reaching out to other employees who might be a good fit. Make a list of the target companies you would like to ideally hire professionals from. These companies could follow similar cultures, have a smaller or larger workforce, and even be from a complementing domain.

In addition, employee referral programs can help you cost-effectively source and hire candidates from the network of the existing employees. You can expect higher employee retention, reduced time to hire and better brand reputation if you hire through this program.

3. Prune your candidate list efficiently

Many companies use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to parse relevant resumes. If you are one of them, please make sure your system makes use of the right keywords to remove rubbish resumes. You can build a list of criteria for the open job positions and rate every resume based on that criteria.

For instance, if you want the new hire to collaborate across departments, ensure the skill reflects in the applicant’s resume before initiating the selection process.

Before scheduling an interview, ask the filtered applicants to fill a 10-question survey, asking why they are looking for a new opportunity, what they hope to achieve with the company, and any other open-ended questions you can think of.

Of course, phone interviews are also convenient for further parsing the resumes. You could call the applicants and ask them to walk you through their resume. That will give you a clear idea of whether they are ready for the next stage in the recruitment funnel.

4. Conduct pre-employment assessments

In this day and age, it has become rare to hire candidates without making them go through some sort of an assessment. Whether it is coding or copywriting, there are tests to measure candidates on their ability to do the job right.

If your company does not conduct standardized tests, then you must take help of a tool like Adaface to include a step where candidates complete a job-related task. This way, you can assess multiple candidates simultaneously.

Adaface is especially helpful when you want your potential employees to have a solid technical core. For instance, if you are recruiting developers, the platform supports various coding tests in Java, C++, Python, and so on.

And if a candidate’s attitude, personality or psychometric traits are more important for a job, assess that instead. Pre-employment assessment tests reduce your time to hire and make your process smoother because they objectively tell you who can move to the interview (or final) round of recruitment.

5. Be structured when conducting interviews

List all the strategic questions on characteristics necessary for the job, such as collaboration intent, innovative thinking, creativity, leadership qualities and so on and then divide the questions amongst all the stakeholders taking the interview.

Remember, it does not have to be a panel interview. The candidate can be asked different questions on separate occasions, such as the initial phone interview with the recruiter and post-assessment interview with the hiring manager.

For instance, if, in the phone interview, the candidate says that the reason they are looking for a new job is because of the undue pressure they receive from the current manager. But to the hiring manager, they say stress does not bother them. That is when it is safe to ask a follow-up question about the difference between pressure and stress.

You could also use interview scorecards to evaluate the answers of candidates by assigning a grade. This exercise helps you think about the candidate’s answer and are not compelled to accept or discard it instantly. Interview scorecards also help you compare candidates easily.

Besides, take notes! You might not remember the actual answers of the candidates after a few days but you can always go back to the notes and get a general feel about the person you interviewed. This is a great activity to follow, especially when you are interviewing many people at once.

But do not overdo it during interviews and keep making notes while listening to the candidate speak. You still have to make eye contact with them to build trust. Make sure you write down the principal point of each answer.

6. Gather references of two equally good candidates

If you have two candidates who seem equally qualified for the job, it might be worth checking their references. A reference check will usually give you a clear idea about who deserves the job. But if the references of both candidates are optimistic and you still have not been able to decide, give them a small project to work on with the team to evaluate how they do the job and how well they fit in with everyone else.

Brief your hiring manager so they know how to execute this appropriately. If you constantly find yourself going back and forth between two good candidates, please re-examine your hiring process. Are you quantifying personality traits and soft skills required for the job? Are you collecting enough data about the candidates during the application process? Assess your approach and make changes so that you are never stuck.

7. Distribute hiring authority

You can make intuitively-sound and objective decisions when you rely on a hiring team. For instance, varied personalities with different roles and stakes in the company can give you a well-rounded perspective required to make a hiring decision.

Of course, including the hiring manager is non-negotiable but in addition to them, you could also invite a team member to help with the hiring process. This person could be second-in-command to the hiring manager. Whoever you choose should be in the best position to assess the unique qualities required in the potential hire.

They should also assess how a candidate’s personality will mesh well with the team members. The most successful companies have a strong, unifying vision. That is why you also need someone who deeply understands the company’s culture, values, and goals. This person can ensure the new hire’s values align with the company’s.

Over to you

Commit to streamlining your hiring process—if you want to know what this process includes, check out our fantastic guide! Follow the steps, as mentioned above, diligently. And take help of a pre-employment assessment platform like Adaface to parse candidates objectively and accurately.

You can conduct a series of tests on coding, aptitude, psychometry, and personality. Opt for merit and not just your “gut.” You are far more likely to be focused and confident about how you filter, screen, and choose the potential employees of your company. Ready to make the right hiring decision for your company?