Define position tangible and intangible requirements.
Making sure you have team agreement on your target candidate will save you valuable work time. Gather the interview team together to simulate “what if” scenarios of different backgrounds. You may include past companies, previous titles, levels of responsibilities, years of experience, education, etc. We have found that this practice gets people to think about their potential candidates before the resumes start coming and the interviews are scheduled. Document your tangible and intangible requirements that can be used later to communicate the job to potential candidates.
2. Reduce the interviewing team to only decision makers.
Often times it is acceptable to have everyone interview each candidate. This clearly delays the search process and increases the loss of candidates. Identify key decision makers and allow them to make the selection. As a Manager it is their decision on who to hire and not hire.
3. Identify a week to interview and block off the whole interview team’s schedule in advance.
As a team, determine what week will work for the whole team to interview candidates. Performing interviews that week will be the interviewers top work priority. Get approval from everyone that there is limited scheduling conflicts.
4. Schedule candidate evaluation meetings within team within 24 hours after the interview.
Everything is fresh in the minds of the interviewers to make decisions on each candidate. It is important to have quantifiable measurements for the positions tangible and intangible qualifications. Use a grid to determine candidate scoring. Discuss qualifications and make final candidate selections.
5. Pre-qualify the candidate's salary expectation and have that compensation pre-approved by management.
This is called getting “your ducks in a row”. The search process doesn’t have to be linear. Do things in parallel to move the process along. Get this critical information early and ask the candidate their salary expectations several time during the process to verify the information. When you are ready to make an offer, you will limit the opportunity for fall out.
6. Capture all background check information during final candidate interviews.
This is another activity that delays your process for a few days. Gather this information in advance. Know where you are in the search and process background checks once a final candidates has been selected.
Results
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Limit candidate fall out of the search.
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Avoid the probability of counter offers.
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Decrease waste of company and candidate time.
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Decrease the chance of a search restart.
Implementing these ideas will significantly reduce your time to fill. Please contact Dave Zimmel for more ways in improving your search process. Sign up for additional ideas about your search process at: www.inpursuitsearch.com.
David Zimmel, President of InPursuit Search
dzimmel@inpursuitsearch.com