Colin Thompson, from CMTR takes a look at the process of recruiting.

The ‘right’ People = Performance = Productivity = Profit

The first step in the process is `Developing a System’.
Staffing System: Few areas have more immediate and lasting impact on organisations than recruiting and selecting employees. If you do not get the right people in the right jobs, you can not accomplish your organisational goals and objectives.

The key to employing effectively is to have a staffing system that provides a template, a model and a process for those who recruit, screen, interview and employ new employees. When properly designed and implemented a staffing system takes much of the risk and uncertainty out of the process by providing a standard approach that ensures that everyone in the company employs in a consistent manner. Having a staffing system will not guarantee success every time. But it will dramatically increase your odds of getting the right person in the job.
Building an effective staffing system consists of five essential steps:

1. Painting a picture of the successful person
2. Developing a cadre of qualified candidates
3. Screening the candidates
4. Interviewing the candidates and checking references
5. Making the decision to employ

Because the personnel selection affects the entire organisation, the impetus to put a staffing system in place must come from the top. CEOs can not get involved in every employment decision. Also, they may or may not want to get involved in the operational details of setting up a staffing system. But if the CEO wants to improve the quality of people at all levels of the organisation, he or she must make staffing a strategic priority and take full responsibility for the system that makes those employ people for there organisation.

To make consistently great people throughout the organisation, I recommend the following best practices:

• Build your staffing system upon performance-based criteria. Most employment decisions are riddled with emotion, opinion and personal bias. A staffing system built around performance-based criteria allows you to eliminate personal bias, inject a healthy dose of objectivity into the process and make better employment decisions.
• Use a structured interview process. A structured interview process, removes subjectivity by forcing you to focus on past job performance. More important, it elicits information that allows you to compare candidates against the performance-based criteria rather than each other.

Develop a staffing plan. An effective staffing system includes a forward-looking staffing plan that allows you to hire in a proactive manner and maximise the organisation’s resources. I believe a staffing plan should cover:

• How many new employees will be needed during the coming year




• Why those employees will be needed




• When they will be needed




• How much it will cost the company to employ them




• What value they will bring to customers and the organisation

Train your managers on how to use the system
In order to make consistently high-quality employment decisions, all managers must understand the process and use it in a consistent manner.

A properly designed system:

• Significantly increases your odds of employing the right people




• Creates consistency in employment decisions throughout the organisation




• Supports management development




• Helps improve benchmarking throughout the organisation




• Reduces the cost of the employment process

You can not make immediate wholesale changes in the quality of your people, but by implementing a staffing system you establish behavioural benchmarks and standards for each position in your company. As people leave, you start employing to those standards and gradually improve the level of talent. Over time, you will see a dramatic improvement in the quality of your talent pool.

The performance-based job profile
The absolute bedrock of every effective employment system, say staffing experts, is a performance-based job profile, an objective set of criteria that spells out the essential activities a person must accomplish and the outcomes he or she must deliver in order to get the job done.

The job profile paints a picture of the ideal candidate and sets the standard by which all employment decisions are made. It sets the tone for the entire process and dictates specific decisions and actions at each step of the process-from the kind of candidate you seek to the wording of the employment advert to the questions asked during the interview to the final hiring decision.

To use job profiles to maximum effectiveness, use a performance-based job profile for every employment decision. Great employment decisions are always made on the ability to predict job success. The best way to predict future job success is to uncover examples of past performance using a performance-based job profile, Build each job profile around objective, quantifiable, measurable criteria. The job profile spells out in specific, quantifiable, measurable terms what success looks like in a particular job.

The ideal job profile fits on one page and includes:

• The five to seven most important outcomes a person needs to deliver in order to get the job done.




• The qualities and characteristics the person needs to get the job done, stated in specific terms of knowledge, skills and abilities.




• Specific short- and long-term performance criteria that spell success in the job.




• Benchmark job performance against both internal and external standards.

Once you have begun to raise the quality of your talent pool based on internal benchmarks, start researching performance criteria from outside the company, using industry standards and other information to raise the bar for exceptional performance.

Regularly update job profiles as the organisation grows and jobs evolve. Review and (if necessary) update job profiles at least once a year. Companies with very rapid growth curves may need to update every three to six months.

Offer the following model to serve as a guide for creating job profiles within your organisation:
Do the research. When researching a profile:

• Use the job description.




• Review past performance appraisals to see what works and what does in the job.




• Talk to “internal experts,” anyone in the company who can shed some light on what it takes to succeed in the job.
  
• Talk to external experts who have different insights and perspectives on the job.




• Do a qualitative benchmark. Identify the best person that reports to you and make a list of what he or she does those causes you to think of him or her as the best. Do the same with the worst person who reports to you.




• Define the expected outcomes.

These are the things a person must accomplish in order to succeed on the job. To identify expected outcomes, ask:

• At the end of six months, what must this person have delivered in order to be considered a great employee?




• At the end of 18 months, what must this person have delivered in order to be considered a great employee?




• At the end of three years, what must this person have delivered in order to be considered a great employee?




• Determine the quantitative requirements needed to get the job done.

Quantitative requirements represent the “what” of the job. They are measurable, easily observable and usually task-specific. Quantitative requirements include:

• Knowledge: A familiarity with the information and processes necessary to skilfully accomplish the tasks of the job.




• Skills: The ability to apply the knowledge to successfully accomplish the tasks of the job.




• Ability: The person can handle the job situations in an appropriate manner.




• Determine the qualitative requirements needed to get the job done.

Qualitative requirements represent the “how” of the job. They are behavioural in nature and indicate how someone needs to go about getting the job done.

Recruiting
The next step in the employment process – and often the toughest in today’s markets – is finding enough qualified candidates. The real problem is not a lack of qualified candidates. It’s that most companies limit themselves by how they define and go after the labour market.

Do not make the mistake of thinking of your labour pool as only those people who do not have a job. Your labour pool actually consists of the entire population in your given area. Recruiting starts with getting the message out that your company is a great place to work and making it easy for the people in your community to reach you.

I recommend the following recruiting best practices:

• Develop a recruiting culture. Everyone from the CEO on down to the front line workers should keep an eye out for potential employees.
  
• Establish an employee referral program. Set up a program whereby employees receive cash bonuses and other rewards for referring talented people.
  
• Create compelling, opportunity-focused job ads. The right wording in an employment advert will go a long way toward improving response rates. The best job adverts:
  
• Focus on what the person needs to do, not what they need to have
  
• Describe what the person will become and where they are going, not where they have been
  
• Describe an opportunity
  
• Avoid restrictions
  
• Use multiple strategies to attract qualified job candidates.

Today’s tight labour markets demand a proactive, creative approach to recruiting. I recommend using a mix of the following strategies:

• Employee referrals




• Compelling, opportunity-oriented job adverts




• Head-hunters/search firms – Specialists not generalists




• Internet




• Temps to perm




• PR articles describing your company as a great place to work




• Trade shows and conventions




• Think out of the box

Recruiting-oriented companies constantly look for new and innovative ways to attract talented people. I suggest the following techniques:

• Offer training sessions so people can learn a new skill. Use the sessions to evaluate attendees as potential job candidates.
  
• Consider short-term consulting contracts at the senior level.
  
• Look into outsourcing and job sharing.
  
• Ask customers, suppliers and vendors for referrals.
  
• Read the papers for news of layoffs, mergers and acquisitions and companies where the share price is declining.
  
• Never stop recruiting.
  Recruit seven days a week, 365 days a year. Never stop recruiting, even when you do not have any job openings.

Screening
An effective staffing system includes a pre-interview screening process that minimises your time investment by bringing in only the best candidates for face-to-face interviews. I recommend the following screening best practices:

• Learn to read résumés properly. Proper screening of résumés will allow you to narrow the pool of candidates to a manageable size with a minimum of time and effort.
  
• Read the résumé in proper chronological order, starting with the first job and working your way forward to the most recent.
  
• Look for increasing levels of responsibilities and accomplishments. In particular, look for achievements that closely correlate to the job at hand.
  
• Use the résumés to screen in rather than screen out. The last thing you want to do is inadvertently weed out great candidates.
  
• Never read more than six or seven résumés at one time.
  
• Never make an employment decision based on a résumé.
  
• Use phone interviews to screen candidates. Never bring someone in for an interview without an initial phone screen. The 10 to 15 minutes you spend up front with candidates can save hours of time later.
  
• Ask questions based upon the job profile. During the phone screen, ask one question related to each criterion on your job profile and listen for specific examples of past performance in that area.

Interviewing
After the job profile, interviewing represents the most critical part of the employment process. Every job interview should answer three questions:

• Can the person do the job?
  
• Will the person do the job?
  
• Does the person fit the job and the company?

The sole purpose of an employment interview is to predict success on the job. In order to do that, you have to be able to answer these three questions. Uncovering that kind of information requires structured interviews that focus on eliciting information about past job behaviour specifically related to the job at hand.

I recommend the following interviewing best practices:

• Prepare for each and every interview.

You can’ not “wing it” and expect to make good employment decisions. Prior to each interview, review the following:

• The résumé and job application
  
• The notes from the phone interview
  
• The job profile
  
• Your list of prepared questions
  
• Use a structured interview process for each candidate.

A structured interview uses a prepared list of questions designed to surface information related to the job profile. This process will:

• Keep you focused on gathering examples of past performance.
  
• Keep the candidate from taking control of the interview
  
• Remove subjectivity and personal bias
  
• Provide an objective, consistent methodology for evaluating candidates
  
• Focus on uncovering information about past performance.

The more you can uncover examples of past performance that match the job profile, the more you can make objective hiring decisions.

• Provide regular interview training for all HR managers.
  To improve the quality of your company’s employment decisions, have your HR managers update their interviewing skills at least once a year.
  
• Ask only behaviour-based questions.
  
• During the interview, avoid opinion-, credential- or experience-based questions. Instead, ask behaviour-based questions that uncover an applicant’s specific work-related experiences and allow you to assess job performance.
  
• Check all references. Reference checks are necessary to:
  
• Verify information collected from the résumé and during the interview
  
• Uncover additional information that might influence your decision about the candidate
  
• Provide legal protection

To get the most from your reference checking: