Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
In many ways it feels like yesterday, and yet it also feels like years ago that we were fielding questions from some of our clients about how difficult it’s been to find candidates — not even great candidates — just candidates in general for their open roles.
And yet, 2020 happened and much of that has changed. To an extent. The unemployment rates spiked, but now have started to settle. Businesses have started to hire again, and job posting numbers are going up. That said, when we’ve had to rush-rush-rush just to get a candidate and then rush-rush-rush to make an offer, chances are we didn’t have much of a process in place because of the scarcity of available talent.
Whether you’ve been in business for a while, or are just getting started, having a consistent hiring process not only helps you make better hiring decisions, but it can also save you time and money. Did you know that the average cost (across industries) of a bad hire is $14,900? And the worst part? That is PER bad hire.
What can we do? Let’s start with a basic, consistent process. One that is easily repeatable and that you can put into place today (and follows our mantra of being simple and practical).
We’ll focus on three of these steps we frequently see business owners miss:
1. Know your needs
If you’ve had the feeling of “I need to hire someone … yesterday,” then you understand the pressure. You’re doing all the things in your business, and you know you need help. The easiest thing to do is start thinking about who you know. I get it. I’ve done the same thing. The problem with this? If you don’t end up really accounting for what you need in the role and stop being focused on who, then you might end up hurting both your business and that relationship.
You don’t need a super-fancy job description, but you do need a clear understanding of what things you want this role to do. Answer some of these questions as you think about it:
2. Phone screen candidates consistently.
In a recent training we facilitated, we asked, “Why is it important to ask consistent questions of candidates in a phone screen or in-person interivew?” One of the best answers I’ve heard in a long time came up: “So you’re using the same measuring stick for all candidates.” Yes, that is exactly it! When you ask a consistent set of questions that are related to your company values and the job responsibilities, it also helps you more clearly identify what answers are stronger and which are not.
Phone screens don’t need to be complicated. They might include three or four key questions that you ask each candidate:
The intent of the phone screen is to identify what candidates you want to further interview — which means investing more of your own time in the process. Not every candidate is going to be strong enough to move onto the next step — and that is exactly what we want the phone screen to help us figure out.
On a phone screen and know you won’t be moving forward? That’s fine. Here’s your close for most of your phone interviews:
“Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today. We are speaking to a number of candidates over the next several days. We expect to notify all candidates whether they are moving forward in the process by [date]. Thank you.”
3. Conduct on-site or virtual interviews (using behavior-based interview questions)
Your on-site or virtual interviews will also use consistent questions, based on the role. Ask candidates the same questions so, again, you’re using the same measuring stick. These are the “tell me about a time when …” questions. These help you uncover experiences the candidate has actually had, not what they should or could do in a more hypothetical way. Think about it — we all know what we should do in a situation. That doesn’t mean we’ve necessarily done that. That’s what we’re trying to uncover.
Behavior-based interview questions don’t have to be intimidating. Start with expectations of the role and the values and behaviors that are important to you in your business.
If it’s important that someone knows how to learn your computer software/customer relationship management in a hurry, your question may sound like this:
“It’s important for this employee to learn and get comfortable with our technology quickly so they can best serve our customers. Tell me about a time when you had to learn a new system quickly. What was the situation? What actions did you take? What were the results?”
You’ll see I ask the same follow-up questions in behavior-based interviews: What was the situation? What actions did you take? What were the results? These follow-up questions keep the discussion focused on the behavior/experience at hand and keeps me from going down a rabbit hole not necessarily related to the question. It also helps guide the candidate through to provide me with the information I need in the interview.
The best thing you can do is create your basic outline for your recruiting and interviewing process. What are your three or four questions that will be asked on all phone screens? What are the core questions you ask in your in-person/virtual interviews? You can always tailor and customize based on the differences in job responsibilities, but starting with a consistent core helps you make sure you’re using the same measuring stick with all candidates.
