Just-In-Time Recruitment Practices
by Janet Reswick Long
From HRfocus, May 1998.

True or false?

• Before a hiring process begins, I insist on input to develop a comprehensive job description that anyone outside our company could readily understand.
• For any given position, I know in advance who will make the ultimate hiring decision, and who needs to be included on the interview team to evaluate candidates.
• I hold my internal hiring managers accountable for deadlines throughout the recruitment process, from reviewing resumes to providing concrete feedback on interviewed candidates.
  

If you responded false to even one of these statements, you may be unwittingly sabotaging your recruitment efforts before they even begin.  The culprit? Poor or insufficient communication.

Integrity Search queried 897 communication professionals about their experiences as candidates in the survey, Hiring: The Candidate's Perspective, and found widespread criticism of employers' interviewing skills and hiring practices.

A Communication Strategy for Success

Think of the recruitment process as a communication continuum.  It starts the moment anyone articulates a staffing need, and it continues through a series of meetings, culminating in a hiring decision based on many sources of input.  In today's highly competitive recruiting environment, you can't afford to waver at all during this process.  Take these five steps to leverage the power of communication:

1. Recruit an internal team.
Forget the "lone ranger" approach.  Recruit from within first and gather a group of colleagues whose diverse talent and perspectives will help you make informed decisions. 

Suppose one of your hiring managers wants to find a head of marketing for a new product or service line.  Where do you go for feedback and guidance? Start with the expert who conceived the product line.  He or she can provide the technical parameters and industry trends critical to the new position.  Tap a peer marketing manager from another product line who could be a good ambassador of the marketing function at your company.  Your team might also include a prospective client as someone to assess the customer service orientation and relationship-building qualities of the candidate.

Limit this team to four to six individuals and assign specific responsibilities and deadlines to everyone.  Prepare each interviewer to focus on one or two areas during his or her time slot, and you'll be able to probe more effectively and avoid repetition.

2. Create a real-life job description.
Most organizations possess position descriptions that scream "due diligence," but how effective are these at communicating your point to the applicant? If they are internally directed and laden with jargon and acronyms, they will have no meaning to prospective candidates.  Remember, this is a communication vehicle, not a legal document.  It's important to re-establish the framework for your job description to emphasize candidate motivations and organizational culture.

To do so, ask the team the following questions:

• What are we really looking for (in plain English)?
• What are the three main things that this person needs to be able to do?
• What kind of person would be attracted to this opportunity?
• What are the true incentives?
• What will be expected of this person in the first month? In six months? In one year?
• How will we know if this person is working out?
• How is performance measured?
• Is there anyone here who already performs well in this function who could be used as a benchmark?

Going through this thought process will prioritize your description, not only in writing, but when you communicate with the candidates.  Take time to answer these questions truthfully, and you'll have a surprisingly competitive edge in recruiting.  Nearly 30 percent of the hiring survey respondents said they were frustrated because either there was no job description or it was inconsistent with the interview process.

3. Design interview questions that yield substantive information.
In today's competitive labor market, candidates pay close attention to the questions they are asked by prospective employers.  In fact, they rank this as the best way to ascertain from an interview what a job will really be like!

Don't send candidates walking with mixed messages.  If your position description emphasizes managing existing accounts, but the interview team focuses on pounding the pavement for new business, you have a problem.  Likewise, if you say you're looking for a strategist but ask questions regarding detail management.

Don't waste this opportunity with meaningless questions like "What book would you want to have if you were stranded on a desert island?" Instead, focus on predictive questions that help you extrapolate from a candidate's actual job experiences what he or she is most likely to apply to your position.

If you ask a candidate what qualities make him a good project manager, you may elicit a laundry list of generic adjectives or phrases such as "good people skills." Ask the same candidate to describe an actual project that almost derailed and how he or she rescued it, and you'll get a thoughtful, unrehearsed response. 

Be wary of questions that "lead" the candidate to the answer you want to hear, like "Do you consider yourself a strategic thinker?" Instead, ask open-ended questions that probe for details and examples that help you build the best composite picture of the candidate. 

4.  Conduct productive interviews.
Sometimes it's the less direct communication "signals" that can send a candidate a negative message.  To avoid these pitfalls, use the following checklist:

• Budget a realistic amount of time for each interviewer to meet with the candidate, making sure there are breaks so the candidate doesn't feel overwhelmed or rushed.
• Assign someone on the schedule to take the candidate to lunch (you'd be surprised how often this basic gets overlooked).
• Arrange for someone to facilitate the interview process so that the candidate is properly directed to the next person on the schedule.
• Provide the candidate with your direct line so that he or she can follow up with any additional questions after the interview.
• Give the candidate a realistic time frame for the decision process, and provide honest assurances that any changes or unexpected delays will be communicated properly.
  

5. Decide how to decide!
Come up with a standard way of comparing and discussing.  Debrief team members about a candidate within 24 hours of the interview, while impressions are still fresh.  If you can't meet in person, communicate with email.  Always go back to the original position blueprint that the team created.  This will help level the playing field and reduce the temptation to go off on tangents.

Set up one or two periodic checkpoints to evaluate whether the candidates meet the originally stated requirements.  Determine the flexibility of those requirements (i.e., compensation, amount of experience, breadth of market).

Above all, keep the process moving.  In a job market this good, desirable candidates won't play the waiting game for long.

Case Study: At the Vanguard of Successful Recruitment

As one of the world's largest mutual find companies, The Vanguard Group faces the central challenge one would expect in an industry growing at a feverish pace: shortage of both people and the time to hire them.

To combat the problem, Jim Norris, Vanguard principal in charge of the company's institutional communications, decided to put his own communication background to use.

With Norris' guidance, his division has adopted a team-driven hiring process.  The key to its success? Giving true ownership of the hiring decision to group managers.  Jim and his team decide upfront who has the ultimate accountability for a new hire, and that person recruits his or her own team of interviewers for a specific search.  By customizing the interview team, the hiring manager can expose the candidate to the people with the most direct knowledge of how the position will work, often from several perspectives.  This streamlines the entire process from months to weeks.

"Our hiring process reflects the new marketplace reality - that most good candidates today are entertaining multiple job offers.  You have to be fast and efficient, from initial contact through deciding whether or not you will extend an offer.  We have narrowed our interview team to a smaller, more relevant group of individuals, [and] our goal is general agreement and affirmation, not perfect consensus," says Norris.