Watch out when hiring to hire the best and avoid legal mistakes
Numerous studies have been completed regarding the hiring process and while the conclusions have been widely agreed upon many employers still forget to do what is best for performance and legal reasons. here are some tips…
- Job analysis. Know what you are looking for before you start the hiring process. Companies skip this part, utilize old or out of date information, or gloss over it as a piece of needed documentation; but this step is one of the most critical. This is your benchmark. The data here should ensure that your interview is reliable and has evidence for validity (Translation: Doing this right will ensure your interview process will work and work consistently). Execute this first step well and you will set the stage for hiring success.
- Structure: When we take the time to develop clear and legitimate criteria for the role then we become aware that there are certain questions that must be answered by every candidate. Interviews become less casual talk and more about relevant and apparent fact finding. This makes sense to an interviewer and a candidate. Ask each candidate the same questions…after all they are interviewing for the same job.
- Probing: Interviewers do a better job when they have a structured follow up probing strategy. The information they gather is more complete and reliable. Most interviewers wing this effort. When the interview is complete sometimes the information collected is not. Other times interviewers contaminate the results by coaching one candidate more than others using follow ups and clarifications.
- Types of Questions: There are 4 types of questions that work well:
- Hypothetical or Situational: These should only be used when created and tested by a professional. These types of interviews should be very structured. Organizations use these questions, but rarely appropriately.
- Behavioral Based: These questions are very reliable as well and can be easily utilized in a corporate environment without a great deal of outside expertise. Unfortunately people have watered down the understanding of these questions to asking questions about a past event. The proper use of a behavior based question is more complex than formulating a past event question and interviewers need training and support tools to do this correctly.
- Background: Asking about experience, education, work history, and qualifications is an important part of a hiring process and leads to a better hire.
- Knowledge: Understanding of facts, processes, software, applications etc are important questions to ask as a part of an interview process.
- Training: All interviewers should receive training. This step demonstrates legally that a company is interested in doing a proper job in the hiring process. Training interviewers also ensures your company comes across more professional during the hiring process which is important for employment branding and hiring ratios.
- Monitoring: Human resources should monitor hiring and promotion decisions for adverse impact and disparate treatment. Providing this type of check and balance will ensure legitimate and defensible reasons for each hiring and promotion decision.
Remember, even when implementing these types of steps in your process you will not eliminate all poor hires or potential lawsuits. However, you will reduce the number of bad hires and potential lawsuits. Your organization will also increase the odds that you will successfully defend yourself is you are sued for wrongful hiring practice. Stay tuned in for Part 2 and Good Luck.
