5 Advanced Hiring Strategies

Recruitment is one of the most important decisions organisations make, yet the methods commonly used to select staff are surprisingly weak. CVs tell you where someone has been, not what they can do, and interviews are heavily influenced by bias and first impressions. There are much better ways to make hiring decisions.

Avoid Cutting Corners: This is an ever-present problem where people are required to follow a standardised process but over time start cutting corners and this typically increases over time. It is quite common. We train a new client on how to select staff, and they are eager follow the process because it works, but with time, people start cutting corners and eventually you are back to where you started with a hit and miss approach to recruitment.

Include Team Members in Interviews: Where possible, include someone in the panel who will be working directly with the candidate. The usual practise is for successful candidates to be interviewed by people who often have nothing to do with the new employee and the team is just given the new staff member.

Much better to include someone from the team.

This gives the team an opportunity to ensure they are compatible and it also sends a message to your staff that you value their opinion, and you want them involved the operations of the business. When you have a stake in a hiring decision you are much more likely to take ownership of the outcome and put effort into establishing and maintaining a cohesive working relationship. 

Observe Behaviour Under Pressure: I have never tried this, but I have thought about it several times. Recently we had a client, and we were profiling for a COO role that was offshore, thus, getting the decision right was more important than ever. The candidate’s profile suggested they had a maladaptive way of dealing with poor performers and had a propensity for being aggressive and uncooperative. The client decided not to run with the candidate and when she told him this over the phone, he became rude and quite aggressive. This interaction proved our client’s decision not to hire this person was correct.

This story reminded me off using this approach with candidates where you are a bit unsure about the suitability. With most candidates there is a mix of strengths and areas for improvement, and if there is some doubt about their suitability, then consider telling the candidate they missed out and see how they respond. Perhaps they will be humble and polite, and this may be enough to change your mind, but if they become rude or aggressive then the decision is also confirmed.

One of the challenges with recruitment is reading between the lines, so to speak. I think it is safe to assume that all candidates play the game and prepare and practice for an interview and pour over their CV and application to make sure it is correct, however, if you create a situation whereby the candidates doesn’t know what to expect and therefore cannot prepare you get more “natural” behaviour. The approach of telling them they missed out on the role allows you to a sample of more “natural” behaviour. 

Interview Last:

The small change that delivers dramatically better hiring decisions is simple:

• Screen candidates first
• Test second
• Interview last

This is easily the single most effective change to your selection process that will yield amazing results. Try it.

Don’t Interview Strangers:

The typical recruitment method is a candidate replies to a job advertisement with their cover letter and resume, all of which is their best version of themselves in the context of the role. To use a fishing metaphor, their CV and cover letter is the bait that they are trying to lure you in on.

This bait may have taken them hours to write, or worse, they got someone else to write it for them. The bait also omits anything the candidate thinks is a negative and focuses on the positives, which is to be expected, but therein lies the problem. All you have of the candidate is their version of themselves and that’s all the data you have to decide whether they are worthy of an interview.

The next step is the face-to-face interview and the only information the panel has on this stranger is what they are prepared to share. That’s all. They are complete strangers who are controlling the narrative.

The candidate walks through the door and straight away your biases and first impression kicks in; do they present well, do they remind you of someone, or whatever it is, sure as the sun coming up each day, you will start to form an opinion immediately. So at this point, you have the candidate’s version of themselves and your biases and intuition – not a thread of objective data yet.

During the interview the candidate answers questions with examples they have rehearsed, and they avoid weak spots, and from that a decision is made on one-sided information. All you really have is what the candidate wanted you to hear and your feelings. We often disguise it as hard objective data and analytical decision making, but you are making a significant decision on very limited data.

There is a simple solution that is easy to implement and will dramatically improve your hiring decisions.

The solution lies in the wording of the job advertisement, telephone screening, psychometric testing and then only interview pretty good candidates. This is easy and effective.

Small Changes, Big Results: The Tiny Tweaks That Transform Recruitment:

The small change that delivers dramatically better hiring decisions is simple:

• Screen candidates first
• Test second
• Interview last

About the Author:

Christopher Apps is an Organisational Psychologist and the owner of Fermion. He stays updated on the latest psychology research and shares evidence-based insights. The focus of Fermion is "Psychometric Testing for Recruitment" and “Recruitment to Retention: How to Select Good Staff & Keep Them”. If you would like to learn how to select good staff and keep them, please contact us at Fermion.

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”

Eleanor Roosevelt.