subject: Did I Really Employ You? [print this page] I am sure we have all done itI am sure we have all done it. Employed someone who on the day of the interview seemed absolutely perfect for the position, then three months, 3 weeks or even three days after they start working with us, we look at them in wonder and ask the question - Did I Really Employ You?
So what goes wrong? What happens between the euphoria of the interview and the reality of the job?
There are three key parts to a job interview and there are also typical mistakes made in recruiting:
THE THREE PART PROCESS
1.Pre-interview
2.During the interview
3.Post interview
PRE-INTERVIEW - This is the most important part of the whole exercise, and the place we are likely to make the greatest mistakes.
MISTAKE NO.1. Rushing to advertise the exact same job the existing person is leaving.
If we are willing not to do that, and to take a little bit of time; involve a few co-workers, think through the opportunity of changing the job, advertising a different job, combining two jobs - we may be able to save ourselves a lot of time and dollar.
So before you rush to advertise, try asking these questions:
1.Do we need to recruit at all - could this position be broken up and offered to other team members to make their jobs more interesting?
2.Does this position offer a career opportunity/promotion for someone else?
3.Can we use this opportunity to design a completely new position and attract a completely different skill-set?
4.Can this job be more cost effectively out-sourced?
5.Could we offer part of the salary saved as an incentive to the team/department for coming up with ideas for improving systems and outputs?
MISTAKE NO. 2. Not pre-designing the interview. If we don't do this, each candidate is asked different questions, each interview takes on a life of its own and evaluation of the various candidates is virtually impossible.
DURING THE INTERVIEW
MISTAKE NO. 3. Not being trained in good interview and questioning techniques. When we don't have these skills, we end up with a 'Do-I-Like-You?' session. Having worked with teams for some 15 years, one of the key points I make is that we don't actually have to like the people we work with, a fact that comes as a huge shock to most people. What we must do is respect the people we work with; their skills, their abilities, their willingness and their flexibility; and once we are willing to do that, a really strange thing happens. We start to like them!
MISTAKE NO 4. Not knowing how to ask questions which cover the 'tricky' areas of the job, and so we find out after the person starts working that they can't work overtime; or won't work Saturday's, or have no intention of up-skilling or multi-skilling or in a case recently, a company employed a man who wouldn't work for a female supervisor!
POST INTERVIEW
MISTAKE NO 5. Not checking references. No matter how great a person appears; no matter how well dressed they are, or how many certificates they have...the golden rule is always check references, and the question you must always ask is, would you re-employ?
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DESK
The interviewee has a responsibility too. When being interviewed, for some strange reason, we seem to feel we have to tell people what they want to hear! I don't know why we do that.
Because just as we have all recruited the wrong people; I suspect most of us at some stage of our careers have also taken on the wrong job, and then had to spend the next two years sticking with the job from hell or the boss from hell just so tenure looked good on our CV.
The interview process has to be a two way interview. As managers we need to get beyond the interview mask and find out who the real person is (not what they want us to believe), and as an interviewee we should be wanting to know as much as possible about the job, the company and the team we are going to join so we can answer our own $64,000 question. Do I want to work for this company?
SUMMARY
The employment contract is a bit like a marriage; easy to get into and extremely costly and painful to get out of so it is vital for your sanity to get it right first time,
Follow the next 7 steps and you won't go far wrong:
1.Define the job, it's role, it's parameters and the skills and attitude required.
2.Design your ideal candidate and grade applicants against that blueprint. No-one is perfect but you want to get the closest match possible.
3.Use the telephone to save time. Have applicants leave a message as to why you should employ them, a great way of culling people who are not suitable.
4.Design an application form which asks the tricky questions (e.g. are you willing to work overtime?). Once again, a great time saver.
5.Design an interview which will get past the interviewee mask.
6.Conduct powerful, targeted interviews which can be evaluated objectively not emotionally.
7.Use creative selection processes to ensure you make the right choice every time (e.g. get the person to spend a day on the job and with the team. Skills are important, but so is team fit.)
There is great reading available online and in print that will offer you:
A process for designing your ideal candidate
A raft of great questions to ask during the interview
A whole series of difficult questions you can put in your application form, PLUS
