One executive I know has hired two senior-level people on airplanes at 35,000 feet. Just the idea of being offered a job in an airplane seat is enough to get candidates to say yes. He says the candidates were really serious, showed up for final interviews and application processing, and are both working in his firm today. As I have repeated, screen people into your firm by finding them a job that fits their skills and desires, and do not screen people out by the traditional methods of endless interviews and unclear job duties.
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, X& i" H6 V: l: w8 vIdea #2: Get rid of bureaucracy. Remove approval layers and reduce the number of interviews to just two to three at the most. Make sure you have a probationary period and terminate poor performers quickly. While it is nice to make slow and certain decisions about people, this marketplace does not make that a very practical policy. While testing and other assessment processes raise the level of certainty about a candidate, they should never interfere with making offers to potentially good people who have been assessed by qualified and empowered managers. If it is critical that a candidate have a particular skill, at least let them know you are very interested and streamline whatever testing process you have. Every day that passes without a decision reduces the likelihood of availability and acceptance. $ y" M G* i0 Y# A. G* ^
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Idea #3: Take a chance. People are hard to predict, as all of us who are or have been recruiters know. Wendell Williams, Charles Handler, and other ERE writers have written that most of our traditional measures of candidates are useless. As Wendell has said, an interview is perhaps only 1% accurate when it comes to predicting how well an employee will work out. Smart managers and smart recruiters are willing to risk a little on a candidate who seems reasonable, and not lose the candidate while they include a few more people in the process. $ J7 t8 `/ N7 _8 ?. K7 C5 S
) U$ L |- }( H0 | \1 gIdea #4: Know what you are looking for. I can't tell you how many times candidates tell me about the interviews they had for positions that were never described to them clearly and that had vague responsibilities. We all work in a rapidly changing world and we all have to have flexibility in describing a job. That's okay; however, it is not appropriate to interview candidates for skills they may not need, for jobs that may never materialize, for jobs that seem to duplicate other jobs in the firm and people don't understand why more are needed, and on and on. Keep things well-defined with a simple reporting structure. I believe that thousands of jobs go unfilled every month because they are not defined enough to convince a candidate of the need for or of the importance of the position to the firm.
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8 ?8 y9 K3 |6 _4 H! d/ lIdea #5: Develop impeccable customer service. This final tip is my old favorite, as you should never make a candidate have to call you. Get back to candidates the same day as the interview. Give them honest assessments and feedback. Provide information immediately. If you are having them travel for an interview, fly them first class or put them up in a fancy hotel. Give them VIP treatment – limo, nice restaurant, whatever. The cost is minimal compared to losing them to a competitor. People remember good service, even if you don't end up hiring them. They will spread the word and make sure that your company gets good publicity. We often treat minor customers better than candidates. Which, in the long run, is worth more? r9 K g6 S; t9 b! i: m
1 y+ G4 d7 o& L E1 ~+ c gAs Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand . . .keep your accounts on your thumb-nail."
