Thank you to everyone who read my first issue of Pondering Leadership: A Deliberate and Thoughtful, Yet Informal Look at Leading and Managing. I appreciate all of the kind words and support. I am thrilled to be writing about my experiences. I hope leaders and managers can incorporate some of my ideas. Last week, I wrote about getting a reluctant employee on board with a project. Welcome back for issue #2 where I write about the hiring process.
An Employee is Leaving. Now What?
When an employee leaves, no matter why they leave, it is always disruptive in the short term. But, it presents an opportunity to take a closer look at the position. Following is the process that has worked well for me when I had entire authority over the hiring process. If you do not, you should follow the processes and procedures in place. Some of my ideas may fit into your process. Also, I never had hundreds and hundreds of applicants. If you have that kind of volume, you need a different strategy for the first part of the process. We can talk about that in Discussions.
Before posting the open position, take a hard look at the job description and ask the following questions:
What, exactly, was this person doing? The person leaving the position may have been doing more than their official duties. Why is that? Or, they may not have been doing everything that is in their job description. Maybe some tasks do not apply to the work anymore and can be removed from the job description. If the outgoing employee did not keep up their skills, they may not have been working as efficiently as they could have been. Maybe some of the tasks could be streamlined or reconfigured.
How does this position fit into the team/organization? What kind of outcomes do you need to get from this position? This can be an opportunity to add duties or switch responsibilities around with other team members where it makes sense.
Who is going to do the work until the position is filled? If there is an internal employee who might be a good fit, see if they are interested in taking over some of the main responsibilities for a few months to try them out. Maybe you can promote into the role instead of posting the job. This is an opportunity to take a look at the whole team and workload and make sure it makes sense.
This is a drastic move, but thinking about all of the above, can you eliminate the role completely?
Keep the Process Simple.
Once you have decided to fill the role, make the application process as easy as possible so you get well-qualified candidates. Generally, good candidates will not spend time on a clunky or invasive application process. I recommend requiring candidates simply email you a resume. You might require applicants to respond to two or three qualifying short answer questions if there are some specifics you need to know up front. Set a reasonable deadline for accepting resumes, such as one month or six weeks.
Share the job post widely to get a deep hiring pool with diverse candidates. Ask your network to share the posting within their networks. Reach out to schools or organizations with diverse populations. Offer to speak to a local community college or university class in your subject. Talk to the local chapters of professional associations about how their members may fit into your open position.
Determine the structure of the hiring process. For many positions, a 30-minute initial phone interview with you or someone you designate, an in person or Zoom interview with the team and maybe a 30 - 60 minute in person or Zoom interview with your or HR is all the time you should need to determine the best candidate to fill the position. You should do what works for your organization but try to keep the process as simple as possible. Set up dates/times for the in person or Zoom interviews at this point, so there are no lengthy delays in the process while you are trying to get everyone’s schedules together as you go along.
If you have a documents or an email organization system that works for you, use it. Here is the system that works for me. In your email system, create a folder with the job title and then sub folders called, Resumes, No, Phone Interview, No Phone Interview, Zoom/In Person with Team, In Person/Zoom with me/HR, etc., including every step in your hiring process.
As you receive resumes, save them in your Resumes sub folder. If time allows, take a quick glance at each resume as it comes in to see if each candidate looks suitable. If so, reach out to them to set up a 30-minute phone interview and slide the email into the Phone interview sub folder. (I will write about the interview process, including good questions to ask, in a future issue.) For the emails from applicants that do not look like a suitable candidate, slide them into your No Phone Interview folder. After your 30-minute phone interviews, slide the emails/resumes you are moving forward with into the Zoom/In Person with Team folder. If time does not allow you to triage resumes on the fly, set up some time once a week to review them and set up the 30-minute phone interviews.
Once the deadline passes, since you have already done your initial phone interviews, you have your candidates for the next round in your Zoom/In Person with Team folder. Also, at this time, take another look at the No folder to make sure you did not miss anyone that looks good.
Repeat these steps for the next rounds of interviews.
Whew! Glad That’s Over.
Having a good process in place makes hiring easier to manage for you, your staff and your applicants. Hopefully, the hardest part about the hiring process will be choosing from all the great candidates who were interested in your open position.
One of the best things about being a manager is calling someone to offer them a job. After your best candidate accepts your job offer, the on boarding process starts, which I will cover in an upcoming newsletter.
Your Turn…
Do you look at the hiring process as Cinderella work or as an opportunity? Or both? Let me know what has worked, or not worked, for you in the Discussion.