Is Your Hiring Process Broken? Answer these 11 Questions to find out!

The hiring process is a vital part of every company’s survival and a very revealing part of every company’s culture. You might say that how a company begins their relationship with an employee is almost as revealing as how they end it. This is the first in a series on how to be sure that your hiring process is working in a pleasant, professional, and effective manner.

You don’t need a lot of data to see if your hiring process is broken. Just ask yourself 11 simple questions.

1. Is your recruitment plan based on acquiring skillsets, on finding good people you want to work with, or on filling empty titles in an org chart so that budgeted funds don't disappear?
It could be for any combination of those reasons, or for any other, but your whole team should be clear on which and why or you won't be working towards the same goals. 

2. Do you have a simple, documented, clearly-articulated policy of professional courtesy?
If anyone in the hiring process is dismissive, disrespectful, or otherwise rude to a candidate, then you are letting them define your company’s standards of behavior. You’ll lose a lot of good candidates that way.

3. Is candidate search and screening done by people who truly understand the range of professional qualifications for each role, or are they just working from a checklist of keywords?
To put it simply, if they’re working from a list of keywords, and it doesn’t include every possible synonym, then qualified candidates are being turned away before you get to meet them.

4. Does everyone involved in screening and interviewing share a clear understanding of what the company needs to get out of each role, why you are hiring, and what kind of person you are trying to find?
If not, your team may be judging the candidates according to irrelevant or unimportant criteria.

5. Do you train your staff to conduct professional interviews?
If so, please let me know. So far, I’ve never seen this done in the IT industry.

6. Do your interviewers and hiring manager have a clearly-defined division of responsibility and authority for the hiring process?
If not, interviewers may think that it’s safer to turn down a candidate rather than risk being held responsible if they don’t work out.

7. Do you give those doing the interviewing sufficient prep time for reviewing each candidate?
If you're just squeezing interviews into regular work days, with no designated prep time at all, then you're belittling the task and adding an unnecessary burden to the interviewer.

8. Do you check that your interviewers have read the resumes and examined the work history, on-line presence, and portfolio of each candidate before meeting them?
Thoroughly evaluating the skills and experience of each candidate before their interview is a minimal professional courtesy. Really, that’s the minimum. Not doing it makes your company look terribly unprofessional.

9. Do your interviewers and hiring manager meet to discuss each candidate and pool their impressions using a transparent and mathematically sound process?
If not, what is your process for interpolating the different opinions? Remember, even though lots of companies do it, averaging opinions like normal numbers doesn't work mathematically. And keeping your team in the dark about how much you value their opinions, that doesn’t work interpersonally.

10. Does every interviewer get timely and constructive feedback aimed at improving their role in the process, the experience, and the outcome?
If you want your team to be good at this, you’re going to have to build a culture that sets, enforces, and iteratively improves standards.

11. Does every candidate get timely and constructive feedback and a chance to respond?
Ghosting is terribly rude, but a form letter rejection is an insult to any candidate who made it past the initial screening. If you’re not trying to learn from the people you reject, then you’re throwing away a valuable resource.

Come on back next week, and we’ll take a deeper dive into Question 1.

And please keep in mind that this is just my opinion. I know that I may be wrong and I welcome your feedback.