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Hiring Tips for Managers
By Susan Doktor MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
Hiring new employees is one of the most consequential tasks in any organization. You can have the best-thought-out strategic plan in the world, but without the right people executing it, you won’t get very far in achieving your goals. Hiring people is time-consuming. It’s also expensive. Businesses spend an average of $4,000 on adding a team member. So hiring the wrong people makes the entire recruiting process more expensive.
How can you make the most of your time and your recruiting dollars while finding the perfect fit for your role? The responsibility may fall on several people in your organization, but ultimately, it’s the hiring manager who’s going to make the final decision — and live with the consequences.
So let’s walk through 11 bits of proven advice to help you achieve the terrific hiring outcomes you hope for. We’ve consulted closely with an expert to gather our tips — ZipRecruiter, one of the best job posting sites for employers in all industries.
What does a hiring manager do?
Not to be glib about it, but hiring managers do two things: they hire people and they manage them.
Let’s start with the hiring part. Hiring managers decide what a winning team looks like. They outline roles and responsibilities for each team member. They create structure. They envision how individual team members must perform to achieve their company’s larger goals. And they build teams with an eye toward efficiency and organizational harmony.
Next comes the management part. Ultimately, a hiring manager is responsible for a new hire’s success. They’re in charge of communicating expectations and providing tools that help team members meet them. It falls upon a hiring manager to motivate team members and handle conflicts among them. And the responsibility for maintaining high employee morale falls within their direct purview.
It’s a tall order. The point is that the job of a hiring manager doesn’t end when an employee signs an employment contract. Hiring managers have to do both parts of their job well.
11 helpful hiring tips for managers
1. Develop a recruiting strategy
Let’s boil down business strategy to its simplest terms. It’s the process of setting up goals, then outlining the tactics necessary to meet them. Following those steps is called executing a strategy.
An HR department’s recruiting strategy won’t mirror your finance or marketing departments’ strategy. But all of those strategies should have one thing in common. They should take into account your organization’s overall priorities first — then ask how your recruitment process can help deliver on them.
Next, you can move on to your department or office goals and tactics. You want a recruiting strategy that helps you find the best candidate for your open role, of course. A process that’s time-efficient and cost-effective. Ideally, your goals will meet the SMART standard: they’ll be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound. Why “Time-Bound”? Because a recruiting strategy should be dynamic. Time-Bound goals account for the fact that your needs will change over time. Time-Bound goals allow you to scale your recruitment process as necessary and be sure it aligns with your organization’s shifting priorities.
How you reach your SMART goals is up to you. Codifying the recruitment process for your team members and hiring managers might be your first tactic. Your entire team should understand how they play a role in delivering an excellent candidate experience, from first contact to subsequent interviews to presenting an offer. You’ll need to budget for the tools your team needs to succeed, too. You’ll probably want to give them access to a top-shelf job posting site. ZipRecruiter, which connects employers with qualified employees, usually within a day of posting a job and uses finely-tuned resume scanning software. Other tactics might include realigning your benefits package with today’s employees’ needs or even changing a department’s reporting structure.
2. Clearly define the role when creating a job description
Successful business interactions are based on good communication. Before you begin meeting with candidates, you should have a perfectly clear idea of what you’re looking for. Your requirements, from must-haves to nice-to-haves, should be well-defined and communicated to candidates via a well-crafted job description. Excellent job descriptions are an important factor in recruiting efficiency. They help candidates self-select, ideally ensuring that only well-qualified candidates apply for the role.
3. Establish clear communication with your recruiting team
Clear communication with your recruiting team will also bring greater efficiency to your recruiting process. What role does each team member play in delivering a great candidate experience? Figure that out and be sure to communicate it clearly to the team. Knowing what’s expected will help each team member succeed in his or her role.
4. Provide assessments to evaluate candidates pre-interview
Successful recruiters are intuitive, to be sure. But they should also rely on science as they assess candidates. Standardizing your evaluation process helps ensure that each candidate who applies for your position will have the opportunity to compete on equal footing.
Using standardized tests — many can be administered online — can help you narrow the pool of candidates you eventually wind up interviewing. Some popular tests include those that measure IQ, verbal ability, mathematical proficiency, and reasoning and problem-solving skills. Personality tests are a little more controversial — they’re often criticized for having built-in biases — but they can be useful in predicting how a candidate will behave in real life.
5. Ask less-common interview questions
Common interview questions certainly have their place in an interview. But candidates normally prepare canned responses to them. Candidates who have been through several interviews may even be bored by them. And asking standard questions is unlikely to provide all the insight you need to make a well-informed hiring decision.
So keep things interesting! Prepare questions that will help reveal whether a candidate has the specific skills they need to succeed in the role you’re trying to fill. Naturally, the questions you ask of a preschool teacher will necessarily differ from those you ask of an epidemiologist or construction worker. And experts point out that some of the best interview questions involve asking candidates to talk about actual events and recount stories from their past. It’s not enough for candidates to say they have the right skills. They should be able to demonstrate their acumen with concrete examples.
Questions about transferable skills, such as decision-making and leadership, can also be creatively crafted. These questions are especially important if you’re speaking with a non-traditional candidate — someone whose qualifications don’t include experience in your specific industry.
6. Showcase your company culture
Can you define your company culture in one or two sentences? Everyone who participates in your hiring process should be able to do so on the spot. And your entire team should be delivering the same message. Consistency is key to corporate branding.
One recent study revealed that nearly three-quarters of employees wouldn’t work for a company that held values contrary to their own. Company culture may even outweigh salary in candidates’ decision-making process. Put your best foot forward, of course, when describing your company culture. But being open and honest is just as important. You want to hire people who will naturally embrace your culture — nor people who will struggle with it.
7. Automate your hiring processes
Even during a period of low unemployment — such as the period we’re experiencing now — you can expect to be inundated with resumes when you post an open position. Managing the volume of responses you get can be a daunting task. That’s where the thoughtful use of automation comes in. Automation can help you get more done more quickly. And it can be useful at many steps along the way to hiring.
Most recruiters pre-screen candidates. But you can go one step further with pre-pre-screening. During the online application process, you should have some make-or-break questions, where the wrong answers result in automatic rejection. You’ll waste less of your time and candidates’ time that way. Should a candidate pass initial muster, some software applications allow you to assign a grade to each application. Armed with a list of graded applications, you can easily decide which candidates’ resumes are worth a read.
You may be surprised by how many candidates you’re interested in interviewing after you read their resumes. But how do you squeeze all those interviews into your schedule? Well, there’s an app for that! One-way video interview software allows you to ask a set of predetermined, consistent questions. Candidates are asked to record their answers by a specific date. They can participate in the interview on their own schedule, even from the comfort of home. Many one-way interview apps allow candidates to re-record their answers. So while one-way interviews may sound impersonal, they can actually relieve candidates’ stress. One-way interviewing gives candidates more control while telling their stories. And it gives you, the recruiter, another opportunity to pre-screen for the best candidates. You can interview just the cream of the crop face-to-face that way.
Incidentally, one of the most important roles automation can play lies in candidate communication. You won’t likely have the time to thank every candidate for applying, schedule every interview, and then thank the candidate for the time they spend with you. Nor should you have to write individual rejection letters. You can bring greater efficiency to the recruitment process by automating these and other routine tasks.
8. Embrace different personality types and cultures
Diversity in the workplace can benefit your organization in many ways. Diversity supports creativity and leads to greater innovation. It helps foster a more engaged workforce. And having a workforce that encompasses multiple cultures, perspectives and personalities can have a direct impact on your bottom line.
That’s why your recruiting strategy should prioritize diversity and inclusion. It should help recruiters and hiring managers overcome automatic biases — we all have them. Teaching your team how to assess candidates more objectively may take formal training, but it opens their eyes to opportunities they might not have otherwise recognized.
9. Be transparent about the role
Honestly, honesty is the best policy when it comes to recruiting. The more frank you are with candidates about your company and the employment opportunity you’re offering, the more likely you are to find a candidate who will be truly satisfied working in your company. Transparency in the recruiting process supports retention and employee engagement.
Being transparent means revealing the challenges a candidate will face in the role you’re seeking to fill. It’s only by talking about challenges that you’ll learn whether a candidate is capable and willing to step up to them.
The same is true about salary. Candidates who don’t care about money are about as rare as unicorns. You can count on salary being top of mind for anyone who applies for your position. So include a salary range in your job description. Once again, you can count on candidates to pre-screen themselves. You won’t wind up interviewing candidates who aren’t willing to work for what your budget permits.
10. Discuss benefits and perks
Benefits typically make up about one-third of a complete compensation package. And employees are aware of their value. So be sure to explain the benefits your company offers in detail to the potential candidates.
Your job posting is a good place to start. Does your company pay the full cost of health insurance? Nowadays, about a third of employers do. How about vacation time? Many companies offer just 10 vacation days to first-year employees. If you offer 15, that’s a great differentiator. Do you offer employees the opportunity to work from home, either part or full-time? That’s a major attraction. Did you know that over two-thirds of households include pets? Pet insurance is an increasingly common employee benefit.
Needless to say, part of your recruitment strategy should be to reassess your benefits package periodically to be sure you’re offering compelling and competitive benefits well-tuned to today’s workforce.
11. Be considerate of your job candidates’ time
Recruiting is a time-consuming process. So is searching for a new job. Many candidates juggle the requirements of job seeking with taking care of their full-time work responsibilities. And that’s on top of being parents, walking the dog, shoveling snow and paying the bills.
You can be sure that candidates take notes during the recruiting process. They’ll make judgments about how well your company treats its employees based on how well you treat them as candidates. Being respectful of candidates’ time makes a positive impression. And an excellent reputation is essential in today’s competitive job market.
Summary of Miami Herald’s hiring tips for managers
We checked in with ZipRecruiter for expert hiring tips as we compiled the advice we’ve provided for hiring managers. The company confirms that successful recruiting takes time and skill and it recommends:
- A well-thought-out recruitment strategy that arms everyone involved in the process with the knowledge and tools they need to find, hire and retain the most qualified employees.
- Liberal use of automation to make your hiring process more efficient.
- Clear communication, especially when it comes to writing job descriptions.
- Interview questions that are both unexpected and specific to the position you’re hiring for.
- Transparency, including providing salary information.
- Emphasizing company culture.
- Prioritizing diversity.
- Showing respect for candidates, especially when it comes to their time.