How to Hire Winning Talent for your Organization

June 21st, 2010 by Skywalk Group Categories: business, Company Training, Employee Development, Human Resources Management, Job Analysis, Recruiting, Staffing and Employment, Supervisory Training, Team Building Tags: behavior-based interviewing, behavioral-based interviewing, candidate screening, candidate sourcing, competencies, hiring, interviewing, Recruiting

Finding the right person to join your company takes more than an interview and a call to extend an offer.  Behind the scene of a successful hire is a well-executed hiring process.

Elizabeth Trcka, Partner and Recruiting expert for Skywalk Group, led this month’s HR Training and Round Table.  Her presentation, “How to Hire the Right Employee” focused on the essential components of a success recruiting strategy.

Three Steps to a Successful Recruiting Strategy

The Position Profile:

The first, and often overlooked, step is to build a position profile.  Many stop at a list of duties and educational requirements.  As Elizabeth pointed out, hiring the right employee goes beyond the job description to a more comprehensive understanding of the skills, credentials, and competencies your next employee must have in order to succeed.  The more thorough your understanding, the better chance the hiring team will have of selecting the person who will ultimately thrive in the position and the company.

Participants were given a hands-on demonstration of the Job Analysis Consulting Tool (JACT), a tool developed by the Skywalk Group to identify the competency level and job behaviors necessary for a particular position.  Completion of the JACT results in a set of statements that describe the behavioral characteristics critical to the position in question.  These statements are then translated into behavioral-based interview questions designed to target the identified competency levels for either an individual contributor or manager level position.

Sourcing Candidates:

Once the position is defined and has received approval to be filled, the next step in the recruiting strategy is to source candidates.  Based on 2009 survey data from CareerXroads, employee referrals are still the most popular external referral source (26.7%), followed by career sites (22.3%) and job boards such as CareerBuilder or Monster (22.3%).  However, sourcing from professional social media sites, like Linkedin or Twitter, is becoming increasingly popular.

Your candidate screening methods should create a pool of candidates who present the baseline technical and professional experience.  Although every interview process can differ slightly, recruiters will often narrow the field with an initial phone screen to gage the candidate’s interest and fit for the position.  The top two or three candidates are then invited to an on-site interview(s), to gather in-depth analysis of the candidate’s knowledge, technical skills, and experience.  Companies may have candidates complete selection tools, such as personality, cognitive, or job skills tests, as a part of the hiring process.

Reference and Background Checks:

Once the perfect candidate is identified, professional references are checked and an offer is extended.  The offer may be contingent on additional testing, such as a drug screen, criminal background checks, and/or physical examination.

To learn more or train managers involved in the process of hiring winning talent for your organization, take advantage of Skywalk Group’s June 2010 Hiring Winning Talent offer.