Plan, Do, Study, and Act - The Foundation for Continuously Improving Recruiting
Plan, Do, Study, and Act is Dr. Edward Deming's approach to Total Quality Improvement. If you know anything about The Adler Group, you know that we believe hiring should be a predictable, repeatable business process. We advocate a process called Performance-based Hiring which we firmly believe allows organizations to systematically hire top talent. To make it predictable and repeatable there must be a structured approach to hiring that can be scaleable throughout an organization and a continuous process of planning, doing, studying, and acting to improve upon that process. There are four components to this process including the creation of a Performance Profile for each position, a focus on sourcing top talent (we call this "Talent-Centric Sourcing"), an evidence-based interview using our Two Question Performance-based Interview, as well as an integrated process for recruiting and closing the candidate. In our recent survey we asked candidates to measure the effectiveness of key aspects of the hiring process from the recruiter's perspective by answering the following question:
Please rank the overall quality and consistency of your hiring process on these measures.
- Understanding Job Needs: Recruiters, managers, and members of the hiring team spend enough time up front understanding real job needs
- Formal Assessment Process: There is a formal debriefing process after each candidate is interviewed to ensure an accurate assessment
- Trained Interviewers: Interviewers are well-trained and prepared to conduct a formal structured interview
- Trained Recruiters: Recruiters have been trained to accurately screen candidates before presenting them to managers
- Professional Offer Process: Offers are negotiated and made in a formal and professional manner with high acceptance rates
- Metrics and Measurement: All aspects of the hiring process are measured and reported upon regularly
- Feedback: There is constant feedback provided at each step to ensure consistency
- Continuous Improvement: Our hiring processes are constantly being upgraded to ensure effectiveness
These eight areas form the basis of a great hiring process. We wanted to know from the recruiter's perspective what parts of the process were working well and which areas were trouble spots.
It is very difficult to agree on candidate competency if the members of the interviewing team don't understand real job needs. Without agreement on real job needs recruiters look for the wrong candidates, the team collectively wastes time sourcing and interviewing inappropriate candidates, and interviewers use their personal, and typically flawed, selection techniques to assess competency. Only 40% of the respondents indicated that the entire team agreed on job needs up front. At the same time, only 29% of the survey respondents indicated that a formal debriefing session was used to share evidence before determining competency, suitability, and fit. Debriefing offers a means to increase objectivity, minimize the impact of weaker interviewers, and assess more job factors in greater depth. The importance of these collective debriefing sessions is amplified since only 31% of the survey respondents indicated that interviewers were well trained.
The self-appraisal grade inflation is again apparent when recruiters evaluated themselves on the screening and recruiting skills. In both cases approximately two-thirds of the respondents indicated they were good or great on these measures. Aside from our own personal observations and other surveys with hiring managers, we believe these results are high for a number of other obvious reasons. One, it's impossible to accurately screen and close candidates when someone doesn't understand real job needs, which was ranked at 40%. So, screening and closing results can't be any higher than this figure. The lack of company-wide recruiter training also puts a lid on both these measures. While recruiters might believe they're good at something, the lack of consistency across the organization means they all do it differently. So the judgment of "quality" is problematic. This is comparable to the issue of everyone on the hiring team using their own interviewing and assessment techniques and then adding up the yes and no votes.
The lack of consistency was very clear in the questions regarding the use of metrics, feedback, and continuous improvement programs. Only 32% of the respondents indicated their companies used in-depth metrics to measure performance, and only 29% had some means to used feedback to improve individual recruiter performance. Programs to improve departmental performance were considered good or great by 40% of the respondents.
What processes are working?
The one process that seemed to rank high was the existence of a formal offer process for closing candidates.
Key conclusions:
- Recruiters need more feedback to ensure that the system can be measured and improved upon. They need to know when things are going well and when things are falling apart. Recruiting should be a key focus for continuous improvement. After all it is a dynamic changing environment and recruiters know that they can't consistently hire top talent without improving their recruiting processes. I was with one major financial institution this week. They are feeling the crunch of the economy and the mortgage crisis. They haven't stopped recruiting, but they are being very careful about new hires. The Director of HR told me that their strategy for the slow down was to make significant investments in their recruiting. As she put it, "This is the time to get our recruiting processes in place and make improvements, because when we turn recruiting on again in full force we need to be much better at it!" Now that's the right attitude! So many companies choose to ignore recruiting in a slow down and when the market picks up they don't have time to improve the process. This is a mistake.
- Train your hiring managers. Recruiters consistently report that companies don't spend enough time or resources in training managers how to interview and assess candidates. Good candidates are lost because hiring managers don't conduct a strong interview.
- Rewrite your job descriptions. This is the heart and soul of great recruiting. Understanding real job needs is the first step in a systematic process for hiring top talent. Many recruiters are still flying blind with only a limited understanding of what it takes to be truly successful in the jobs they recruit for. At best these recruiters become administrators of the recruiting process instead of being full partners with their hiring managers to close top talent.
Recruiting is a process that must be managed. Companies and third-party recruiters who understand this will prosper, and those who don't will continue to hire average talent.
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Click to download the slides from Adler Group & Hireability's discussion "Do You Have What it Takes to Hire Top Talent?" - Performance Profile Preparation Guide
Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating performance profiles including some great sample. Use this when taking your next assignment and discover how to change the selection criteria from skills to performance - The Performance-based Interview Guide
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Check the recruiters on your team (or yourself!) with this 10-Factor Assessment for Corporate Recruiters. - The Corporate Recruiting Department 10-Factor Assessment of Critical Deliverables
Check your recruiting team with this 10-Factor Assessment for a Corporate Recruiting Department. - Legal White Paper
Click to download this report on the legal foundation for Performance-based Hiringsm.