6 Steps for Hiring the Best Every Time

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:00:00 -0800

Over the past 30-plus years, I've been involved in thousands of searches, worked with hundreds of hiring managers, trained 3,000 to 4,000 recruiters, and worked closely with dozens of major companies. Following are some of the common threads among the best techniques, processes, and tools that I have seen and used.

Defend Your Candidate from the Competition and Superficial Assessments

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 09:40:01 -0800

I wrote a version of this article for ERE in April 2007. It seemed worthy of repeating as a year-end reminder of the critical role that recruiters need to play to ensure that bad decisions don't preclude the best person from getting hired. As you'll find out, the key point of the article is that good candidates, who we spent a great deal of time developing, can often be lost for easily preventable reasons. Setting up some process or check-point can prevent the problem from arising in the first place. If this isn't possible, you need to have some counter-measures ready to employ to mitigate any problems that do arise.

The One Question Interview Challenge

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 08:06:26 -0800

Two months ago I gave a presentation to a room full of HR managers and executives from an engineering company in Omaha, Nebraska. After the presentation I had several conversations about their hiring challenges with individual managers. I ended up giving three people copies of the audio CD, "The One Question Interview," with the challenge that they use this approach on their next big hire and report back on their results. Last Thursday I received the following voice message from John Martin of Cascade Engineering. Here's what he had to say:

How to Control Your Hiring Manager Clients and Make More Placements

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:51:46 -0800

Our clients do a lot of dumb thing that cause us recruiters to work too hard. These all seem to fall into big buckets of lost opportunities. Here are the ones that head the list:

The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:27:46 -0800

Every sport has rules, even pickup games. We even have rules for our kids - when they can watch TV, play video games, go to bed, etc. Business has rules for just about everything - important things like capital expenditures, accounting, SEC reporting, and product design and testing; or less important things like how to dress, when to come to work, how to earn vacation, and how to fill in expense reports. What's surprising is there aren't any rules for what's supposedly the most important thing a company needs to do - hire and retain top talent.

Compared to What?

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 10:50:52 -0800

I spent the first half of the '90s working at GE. This was in Jack Welch's heyday: best practices, work-out, and management course from Harvard professors at the training center at Croton-on-Hudson (affectionately referred to as Camp GE.) It was a great experience, but there were a few things about GE's personnel policies that didn't really make sense. One of these was what we called the 10-80-10 policy.

Would Your Recruitment Ads Win a Super Bowl Contest?

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 12:05:36 -0800

Ok, I admit it. Unless my team is playing, I only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. And for advertising agencies, the Super Bowl is every bit as critical a contest as it is for the football teams. It defines bragging rights, generates huge publicity, and can mean millions of dollars in future business. If you search the web for Super Bowl advertising, you get over 2.6 million hits--there is actually a site called superbowl-ads.com. There are hundreds of sites that ask you to vote for your favorite (and least favorite) ads. It's become part of our culture. Job Boards such as CareerBuilder (with their chimpanzee campaign) have used the Super Bowl to generate enormous awareness of their offerings.

Using the Panel Interview to Save Time and Increase Accuracy

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 09:40:57 -0800

If you want to increase assessment accuracy and save time, conduct more panel interviews. These are much better than an all-day series of one-on-one 45-60-minute interviews. When organized properly, panel interviews help everybody involved learn more about the candidate, even weaker interviewers, if they just observe. Panel interviews also provide a great means for subordinates to get involved in the hiring process. Subordinates should never conduct one-on-one interviews, since they usually are trying to work for someone they like, so they focus on the wrong issues. For another, they're rarely objective, and worse, many of them are weak interviewers. A panel interview overcomes all of these problems. However, I didn't always believe this strongly that panel interviews were that good of an idea.

Being a Good Interviewer is More About Recruiting than Selection

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 12:00:00 -0800

I learned to become a better interviewer than my clients for only one reason: to prevent good candidates from being excluded for bad reasons. Too many of my clients were assessing candidates improperly, either overvaluing first impressions or using some narrow range of skills to determine competency.

Why You Must Eliminate Job Descriptions

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 12:00:00 -0800

As far as I'm concerned, the use of traditional qualifications-based job descriptions are the primary reason companies are not finding enough top people.

In this article, I'm going to prove that they are unnecessary, counter-productive, reduce the size of the applicant pool, encourage sloppy management, and are the cause of most hiring mistakes. Of course, your comments are welcome.

How to Prevent Just About Every Common Hiring Mistake There Is

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 12:00:00 -0800

In this article, I want to present 12 common hiring problems that can be virtually eliminated by using performance profiles instead of job descriptions.

A Performance Profile for a Recruiting Manager

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 12:00:00 -0800

As you know, I suggest that recruiters prepare a performance profile whenever starting a search assignment. A performance profile describes the top six to eight performance objectives a person taking the job needs to do to be considered successful.

How Performance Profiles Will Make You a Better Recruiter

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 19:52:08 -0800

For years, I've been writing about the use of performance profiles as the lynchpin of effective recruiting. Everybody who has ever used one for conducting a search has experienced better results. By this I mean more and stronger candidates, improved relationships with hiring manager clients, better understanding of real job needs, more consensus about candidates, candidates who are easier to close, a significant reduction in salary demands, fewer counter-offers being accepted, a reduction in turnover, increased job satisfaction and far better on-the-job performance.

Eliminate Job Descriptions if You Want to Hire More Passive Candidates

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 12:00:00 -0800

I've been a very successful recruiter, a reasonably successful trainer, and a middling author for the past 25 plus years. Early on, I came up with a new way to take search assignments, by first asking my clients to describe what successful people doing the work required did differently than average people. My objective in asking this question was part of a youthful and dubious goal of doubling my search commission income while cutting in half the time spent on any search.

The #1 Secret of Hiring Success

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:00:00 -0800

If your hiring manager clients are not doing a good job of assessing your candidates, you should review this article with them. No matter how good a recruiter you are, if your clients pass on your good candidates, you're working too hard doing searches over again. The key is just to assess a candidate's motivation to do the work.