HR Effective Hiring Practices

¶ … Hiring Processes for Employment One of the most critical determining factors of whether an employee will succeed in a position or not takes place before the employee even becomes part of the organization in the form of the hiring process. Employers may use a wide variety of potential methods to notify candidates about potential jobs.

The most straightforward method is that of advertisements on websites, both general and trade-based.[footnoteRef:1] While this has the advantage of casting a wide net for potential applicants, it also is relatively diffuse and relatively random in terms of the candidates it solicits. Internal postings ensure that candidates have a good idea of the job and the company but this technique obviously limits the scope of the job search and can shut the organization off from developing potentially valuable new talent. Still, internally-based approaches are preferred by many organizations.

"It makes sense: it takes a certain kind of person to thrive at" the organization, "and those people tend to spend time (personally and professionally) with people like themselves."[footnoteRef:2] In-house hires have already demonstrated they can succeed in the environment. [1: "How employers hire," iSeek Jobs, http://www.iseek.org/jobs/employershire.html (December 31, 2015)] [2: Peter Carbonara, "Hire for attitude, train for skill," Fast Company, August 31, 1996, http://www.fastcompany.com/26996/hire-attitude-train-skill (December 32, 2015)] Job agencies and headhunters can be useful.

They enable some prescreening of the potential candidate by the agency, ensuring the suitability of the candidate and a validation of his or her references. They can also save the company the costs of extensive background checks. Job fairs can also be useful, particularly at colleges for younger employees seeking entry-level positions. However, for higher-level managerial and executive positions, such general strategies tend to be less useful. After prescreening resumes, the next step usually involves some sort of interview process.

Having a clear sense of the skills required for the position is essential. "What are the five key skills a successful candidate must have to succeed at this job? And what are the five key attitudes or behaviors that will enable him or her not just to succeed but to excel at it? You need to know these key skills and behaviors, clearly and unambiguously."[footnoteRef:3] Defining the job according to KSAs (knowledge, skills, and abilities) is a frequently-used technique of many employers.

For many jobs, having certain technical capabilities is indeed essential. For this reason, along with general interviews to determine the personality of the candidate, applicants will frequently be asked to perform " .. tests (Do they need to write code in PHP and jQuery? Give them some coding to do); role plays (Do they need to sell? Take them on a ride-along and watch them sell); simulations (Need to make snap decisions under pressure? Let's see them do it)" to concretely determine that they can perform a specific task.

[footnoteRef:4] The downside to using such task-based approaches, however, is that no simulated task can arguably mimic the demands of the actual workplace. [3: Ian McKeown, "How to hire great people every time," INC, http://www.inc.com/les-mckeown/how-to-hire-great-people-every-time.html (December 31, 2015)] [4: Ibid.] Furthermore, other employers contend that character is more important than being able to perform specific skills-based tasks. Yes, it is important that an IT worker is fluent in the system he or she will be troubleshooting or that a pilot can fly a plane.

But more and more employers subscribe to the theory that skills can be more easily taught than personality. For example, the famously iconoclastic Southwest Airlines aggressively recruits employees with a strong, upbeat sense of humor and unflappable personalities.

In one interview, Southwest asked "16 hopefuls to fill out and read aloud a personal 'Coat of Arms' -- a questionnaire on which applicants complete statements such as, 'One time my sense of humor helped me was'; 'A time I reached my peak performance was'; 'My personal motto is.'"[footnoteRef:5] Another Southwest exercise involves candidates selecting seven out of fifteen people to go into a fallout shelter to survive a predicted nuclear war.

As the candidates debate who to include on the list, HR personnel observe them during the debate to see how they handle crisis situations. Southwest has a very informal culture and it is essential that job-seekers fit in.

Southwest believes "The most common -- and fatal -- hiring mistake is to find someone with the right skills but the wrong mind-set and hire them on the theory, 'We can change 'em.'"[footnoteRef:6] [5: Carbonara] [6: Ibid.] In fact, the Internet shoe retailer Zappos is so convinced that company culture is a determining factor in an employee's success that it offers employees the opportunity to quit in their first weeks of employment.

Zappos interviews candidates for company fit and technical competency and company fit is weighted 50% in relation to the rest of the employee's experience and abilities.[footnoteRef:7] It also insists that all employees are trained in all aspects of the organization, including lower-level customer service work at its call center, to get a sense of how their job fits into the overall company ethos.

"If you are hired by Zappos, you can expect to spend your first three-four weeks manning phones in their call center learning how to respond to customer needs" and.