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Hasty hiring brings eventual firing.
These wise words should be the mantra for every organization hiring from today’s overcrowded job market. If your course’s hiring process consists of putting out a job posting, sifting through résumés and hiring the first person who doesn’t throw up a major red flag during an interview, then it’s time to adopt a renewed approach.
“Making poor hiring decisions will cost both your budget and your group’s unique culture,” says Dave Anderson, author of “How to Lead by The Book: Proverbs, Parables, and Principles to Tackle Your Toughest Business Challenges.” “It’s much better to be temporarily short-staffed than to lower your standards. Learn to use the interview process to knock out the candidates who aren’t the right fit for you, and you’ll end up with a new team member who will be an asset to your brand, your morale, your momentum and your productivity for a long time to come.”
A knockout interview eliminates candidates from consideration using smart, rigorous standards without wasting time, Anderson says. Knockout interviews help upgrade hiring from an inclusive process to an elimination process, thus saving your most valuable resource – time. To that end, knockout interviews are invaluable.
“The knockout interview begins before you ever meet a candidate face to face,” Anderson says. “In fact, your goal is to avoid face time with as many applicants as possible. As soon as you receive the first stack of résumés, you should look for reasons to cut individuals from consideration.”
Anderson acknowledges this method may seem ruthless and cutthroat. However, it’s prudent to identify undesirables before they’ve landed a position on your payroll.
Plus, from a financial standpoint, hiring hastily can be expensive. Think about it: If you have to let someone go, you’re facing numerous expenses, including administrative costs, possible severance pay and possible unemployment compensation. Then you’ll have to pay for attracting a new candidate and providing training for that person. And all the while, you might have to pay others overtime to complete essential tasks. When you’re more discriminating upfront, you’re a better steward of your organization’s resources.
“I used to think that I needed to talk to a lot of people to find a great job candidate,” Anderson says. “Frankly, it’s exhausting to speak to a lot of people if they are the wrong people. I now judge the strength of my organization’s interview process by how few folks we meet face to face.
“Ultimately, because of the knockout interview process, I am assured that the handful of people who make the cut are likely to possess the right stuff and add to my organization instead of costing it.”
If you would like to put the knockout interview to work for your own facility, here are five things to keep in mind.
Be true to the little things
When hiring a new person to your team, no detail is too small to overlook. The fact is, how well a person performs on the little things is indicative of how well he will – or won’t – perform on the big things. You can evaluate this capability as soon as the first batch of résumés lands on your desk. As you read through them, consciously look for reasons to put some of those résumés in the reject pile.
“Look for use of professional language and correctly-spelled words,” Anderson says. “If these aren’t present, it’s a reason for disqualification. Recently, my organization hired a new administrative assistant. One application for the job had multiple spelling and grammatical errors. Knockout! One person sent emails in all lowercase letters. Knockout! And unbelievably, one person even spelled his own last name incorrectly in one spot. Definite knockout! I knew we didn’t want these sorts of slip-ups representing our company.”
The basic ability to do the job.
After you’ve cut the dead weight from the résumés, it’s time to start conducting phone interviews. In addition to making sure that candidates communicate clearly and respectfully, your task at this point is to ensure that they can fulfill the non-negotiables of the position.
“You may want to ask applicants about whether they’re available to work certain days or hours, or if they’re comfortable performing specific tasks,” Anderson says. “If, for example, you need someone to work Saturdays and a particular applicant is unable to do so, why would you want to wait until he has come to your office and wasted your – and his – time to discover this? A phone interview is the time for these kinds of knockouts to happen.”
Let them do the talking.
When conducting face-to-face interviews, many employers put interviewees at ease by doing most of the talking and spending much of the interview telling the candidate about how great the company is.
However, your job as a leader isn’t to have a friendly chat – it’s to assess an applicant’s character and competency. Specifically, you should avoid:
• Talking too much – you need to learn about the candidate, not vice versa
• Having a time-wasting, good-old-boy, get-acquainted session
• Conducting the interview as though it were a casual conversation
• Degrading the interview into a sales pitch
“There’s no need to intimidate or to be unduly overbearing toward an interviewee,” Anderson says, “but keep in mind your objective is to evaluate past accomplishments, because past performance is much more telling than past experience. Dig into her life and try to determine what her key traits, such as character, talent, attitude, energy and drive, look like. Those things strengthen or weaken your team, not how glibly a person can carry on a conversation. If the candidate doesn’t expressing these critical components, then it’s time for another knockout.”
Look at their journey, not their location.
Just as you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, you shouldn’t judge a job candidate by his location on life’s ladder. Don’t judge applicants strictly by the station they have reached in life. Dig deeper.
“I’m not saying you should disregard people who have had an easier road through life,” Anderson says. “Simply acknowledge that they may not have had the opportunity to face certain challenges that can forge strength of character and develop persistence. It may be that the best candidate was born with the proverbial silver spoon, but in order to find out, you’ll have to dig deep. You won’t be able to judge this strictly by the impressive job titles on his résumé.”
Share your core values.
The knockout interview provides a reason to say “no” to a job candidate. By sharing your core values with applicants, though, you may find that they “knock” themselves “out” for you. Share your organization’s core values and behavioral expectations before extending an offer. Let applicants know that you have non-negotiable standards for integrity, teamwork, attitude, attention to detail, etc. Then describe what these behaviors look like in practice, and be honest about the consequences for not living up to these standards.
“It’s better to let these folks turn away voluntarily before they’re on your payroll, where they’ll infect attitudes, lower morale and undermine your own credibility as a leader,” Anderson says.
“Ultimately, knockout interviews work because they force a candidate to show through her actions that she has initiative, that she really wants a job and that she would like to work for your organization in particular,” Anderson adds. “And since these techniques reveal whether a candidate is prepared or not, they’ll prevent your existing team members from having to bail out an unqualified newcomer. Knockout interviews give you, as a leader, the power to serve as a sentry for your organization and to protect and preserve its culture, values, and people.” GCI
Dottie DeHart is a writer based in Hickory, N.C.
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