6

Determining Hiring Criteria

Gary Rogers, chairman and CEO of Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream, said it best: “You can’t spend too much time on hiring smart. The alternative is to manage tough, which is much more time-consuming.”¹

Many organizations make hiring decisions quickly and without a lot of thought. Why? Because the work has to get done so let’s just hire someone as fast as we can and hope we get the right person. Some people call this the “foggy mirror” method of hiring: All that matters is the applicant is breathing!

Taking a strategic approach to hiring may take a bit more time, but, in the long run, the time will be well spent if you get a hire who is successful. Hiring strategically involves knowing what will define success in the new hire—in other words, what skills, abilities, and qualities have other people who’ve succeeded in this position had, and what made them successful? You and anyone else who is part of the selection process will need to be trained in how to interview. You will need to define your culture and understand the qualities of a person who does well in your organization.

Hire for Culture

You need to understand your culture. In the wonderful book Nuts: Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success,²the authors share stories of the beginning of Southwest Airlines. They’ve built a successful airline around their passion for “hiring for attitude and training for skill.” By sticking with this philosophy, they have been able to create a sustaining culture in which flight attendants are encouraged to creatively give the FAA required briefing that, on most airlines, passengers totally ignore. On Southwest, you never know if you will hear it done in a song or a rap, or interspersed with funny comments. But passengers listen (and isn’t that what the FAA wants them to do?) and passengers know immediately that this isn’t a company that takes itself too seriously. (Southwest does hire its pilots and mechanics for their skill as well as their attitude.) They are right; it is easier to teach someone how to serve drinks from a rolling cart down a narrow isle than to teach him or her how to do that same job with a positive attitude and a smile!

So, how do you determine what your culture is? Here are some things to consider:

    What is the leadership style?

    Performance standards—how do you hold people accountable?

    How do you state your mission, vision, values?

    What is your work environment, formal or casual?

    What is your dress code, business or business casual with casual Fridays?

    How are mistakes handled in your organization? Are people encouraged to try?

    What is the prevailing management style?

    What qualities to you look for when hiring?

The Selection Process

Before you even start looking at resumes, it is a good idea to be clear about what you are really looking for. The first step is to review the job description and look at the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to succeed in this position. HR and the hiring manager should carefully consider whether or not the skills are required, or, for the right person, you could do without one that is listed. Coming up with a list of required and preferred skills will help you search for candidates.

Another way of gathering valuable information prior to recruiting is to know what makes your “star” employees successful in a particular position. This can be done by interviewing each “star” and determining the background/skills/interests/abilities/education or whatever you find that makes each one particularly good at this position. You can take what you learn from these interviews to help you create your required/preferred skills list.

Reviewing Resumes

Set your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to screen the resumes and online applications that include the key words you’ve selected as basic to your process or your HR team may pre-screen resumes for you. What you are looking for is relevant experience in the areas that are going to make the next person successful. Remember to only look for job-related experience and try to take out your biases. For example, if you went to the University of Michigan and really don’t like anyone who went to Michigan State, try to put that rivalry aside if your perfect candidate happened to go to MSU!

How much time should you devote to reviewing a resume? That question is impossible to answer except to say this: Take enough time to get a sense that the person has the basic skills this position requires, and the necessary education, credentials, or certifications. Try to avoid coming up with arbitrary ways to exclude resumes, such as rejecting anyone who doesn’t include a cover letter (unless you requested a cover letter in your job posting or the job requires someone who can write a well-crafted letter). Remember: Unless the job requires a degree from an Ivy League school, rejecting someone who went to your local state school is unacceptable; keep in mind the words job related.

When reviewing a resume or application, you should be looking for career progression and relevant achievements. A red flag would be a person who was a vice president two jobs ago and now is a manager in the same field for a smaller organization; usually a talented applicant’s resume will show upward career progression. However, you may encounter really talented people who for personal reasons have taken lesser jobs simply to keep working. If you see something of value in the person’s background, don’t automatically disqualify the person because he or she has been unemployed or has taken lower-level positions. Do a phone screen and find out what his or her situation is, as this person may be that diamond in the rough!

There is a lot of discussion now about whether resumes are even relevant in the age of online applications. Many organizations don’t require resumes but rely on their own online application. Your firm may still want to collect resumes; if not, be sure to let your senior managers know that many times online applications do not print well or may be formatted in an unusual manner. If a senior manager is expecting an application to resemble a resume, he or she may be disappointed and have a negative impression of the candidate—and you don’t want that to happen.

Should you respond to every application/resume you receive? Well, if you’ve ever looked for a job, you most likely think the answer is yes. However, if you are in a busy HR department (or don’t have an HR person), it can be a bit overwhelming to respond to everyone who applies to your firm. Many applicant tracking systems have an automatic feature that lets people know their resume/application was received. This is a great feature and helps to enhance your reputation as a good place to work. What we hear from applicants is they feel as if their resume/application goes into a black hole if they don’t at least get an acknowledgment from the employer.

    See Chapter 10 (Making a Hiring Decision).

If you do a phone interview or an in-person interview, it is imperative that you let that people know whether they are being considered or not. You should not tell them why they are not being considered—just that they are not a candidate for this position—and thank them for their time and interest in your organization. Remember that every applicant is a potential customer, and how he or she is treated can really make a difference. Not only might the person be a customer, he or she might better fit a job you have available in the future or may know someone who would be a candidate. You want applicants to tell everyone they know that your organization, even though they didn’t get the job, treated them with dignity and respect.

As you are reviewing resumes or applications, watch for these red flags. These may be areas you want to highlight so that when you are doing a phone screen with the candidate, you can get more information in order to evaluate the candidate’s potential for the open position:

    No dates of employment (just organizations listed with job duties).

    Gaps in employment (unless they can be explained).

    Frequent job changes to positions of lesser responsibility.

    Lists of accomplishments that can’t be linked to specific jobs.

Discussion Questions

1.    Why is understanding your organization’s culture important in the hiring process?

2.    Name three or four ways to determine organizational culture.

3.    How can having a required/desired list help you make a good hire?

4.    What should you look for when reviewing a resume or application?

5.    Name two or three “red flags” on resumes.