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Structuring your hiring process to identify the best candidates
Hiring is a bit like playing poker. In poker, you look across the table at your opponents trying to determine the strength of their hand based on the information you have (e.g., the cards in your hand, the cards on the table) as well as their body language and other nonverbal cues. Ultimately, you decide whether to bet or fold.
In hiring, you sit across the table from candidates trying to determine their capabilities to perform the job based on the information you have in front ofyou (e.g., a resume) as well as their body language and other nonverbal cues. Ultimately, you decide whether to hire a candidate or move on to the next one.
What makes these two decisions drastically different, however, is that you have the ability to structure the hiring process in ways that yield a wealth of information about candidates' capabilities and likely performance on the job, if hired. You do not have this same luxury in poker.
Effective hiring processes include the following three basic phases:
* Recruiting-The objective is to get as many potentially qualified candidates to apply for the job as possible.
* Screening-The objective is to gather structured information about candidates in an effort to narrow the funnel of candidates.
* Selection-The objective is to make hiring decisions and offer jobs to those individuals who are most likely to be successful on the job.
Let's look at three hypothetical hiring processes and evaluate the effectiveness of each in terms of its ability to identify the best candidates for the job.
Process #1: Draw Names From a Hat
Although you probably put more rigor into your hiring process than simply drawing names from a hat, what you will see in this illustration is that your process-despite the increased rigor-may not be much more effective.
Let's say...