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How-To Guide to Effective Hiring

Assembling a hardworking team is integral to your company’s success

By Reed Felton

Where do you spend more time: At home with your spouse or family, or at work? Was the courtship period with your spouse longer than the time it took you to interview for the job you currently have? The answer to these questions underscores the importance of having an effective hiring process in place to ensure consistently good hires.

Hiring the best person for the job is easily one of the most “impact-full” decisions a manager will make. You have heard the old saying: “One bad egg can spoil the omelet.” One poor hire is far worse than a bad omelet. It is having a bad omelet every day for the length of time the employee is part of your company. By contrast, think of how you feel about the highly skilled, hardworking employee with great ideas and a winning attitude. Few decisions in business are more rewarding, or more highly leveraged, than bringing a talented, long-term employee onto your team.

Borrowing from Jim Collins, author of Good to Great: People aren’t our greatest asset. The right people, in the right seat on the bus, are. Getting the wrong people off the bus is also key. The singular focus on talent will win the day if your company is going to grow and prosper.

Three key elements to hiring effectively:

1. Know exactly what skills and abilities you need now, and for the future.

2. Create a thorough process that will add discipline to your search and minimize false starts and miscues.

3. Persistence and luck: I count these two elements as one key since persistence seems to produce luck.

The Process: What and Whom are You Looking for?

Be absolutely clear about what is required for the position and have top managers in agreement regarding the specs for the position. List the physical, mental and emotional demands of the job. If some travel or a lot of travel is required, be as accurate as possible in representing what the demands of the job will be. List specific skill sets required and desired levels of proficiency for the area of expertise you are targeting.
Caution: Posting required years of experience for a position can be counterproductive. Think of a person that has loads of talent and aptitude whose performance eclipses those of her peers with many more years of experience.

List the most essential behaviors for the position. Another way to think about this is to ask, “What do the best people we have in this position do that makes them the best?” Interview the top performers in your shop asking what makes them so good at their job. Also ask them for the single most important quality necessary to be successful at their position. This is a win/win situation. You get good information and your employee will feel flattered by being asked for input on his secrets to success.

The Interview: Get the Facts and Put on the Charm!

It is helpful to create as much objective data about the candidate as possible. An AutoCAD operator can be tested for proficiency by being given an exercise to draw something in a given amount of time, or to edit or modify an existing drawing. Cabinetmakers can be asked to talk you through a process or to value engineer or problem solve as you walk around the shop floor. Foremen or managers can be queried on what they would do to manage a given situation and for specific examples of how they have handled similar situations in the past.

Prepare a specific list of questions for the candidate and have some of the interview team ask some of the questions more than once. Getting a feel on how consistently the candidate responds is helpful. Use questions that are performance based. Examples include questions such as:

• Tell me a time when you… and it saved the company money.

• Share a new process you have learned in the last four months.

• Give an example of how your supervision has made the shop floor more productive in the last month. Be specific.

• Please share your decision-making process when you qualify a new supplier.

All these questions are focused on job skills, experience or process. It is relatively easy to formulate a comprehensive list of interview questions when referencing the list of key behaviors that have been developed for the position.
A recruitment process that reflects an accurate picture of the position with a process that allows comparison of the position requirement with the candidate’s profile and history enables you to match the talent you are looking for with the demands of the position.

You Are Being Interviewed Too!

Today’s employment market is tougher than ever to find qualified candidates, especially in the woodworking arena. While we think we have a great trade to make a career, the rest of the world may not be looking through the same glasses we are. Here are some of the things that will help you present your company in the best possible way.

1. Put the candidate’s name on your welcome board. This is impressive to any candidate. A word of caution: This may not be a good idea if the candidate is working for a local company and wants to maintain confidentiality about his job search.

2. Be a good host. The simple things like offering a beverage at the beginning of an interview, taking his coat and being sensitive to his schedule, and offering bio breaks are just good manners and will help him be more at ease.

3. Should lunch or dinner be part of the process, avoid restaurants that are noisy. Also, a discreet word to the hostess that you want to be served efficiently with a minimum of interruptions can prevent your conversation from being unnecessarily interrupted.

4. Prepare a timed agenda with the names and positions the candidate will interview with. Review it with them and let them know if it is a loose schedule or a very stringent timetable.

5. Show sincere appreciation for them taking the time out of their schedule to learn more about your company. When introducing them to the next person to interview, be enthusiastic about them when doing the hand-off, i.e., “James and I had a fascinating conversation; I hope you enjoy getting acquainted with him as much as I have.”

6. Be the best listener you are capable of being. As the interviewer, you are seeking to learn as much as possible. If you are listening you are learning. Take detailed notes, and resist interrupting or talking about yourself. A good rule of thumb is to allow the candidate to do 80 percent of the talking.

7. Let the candidate know what you are most proud of about your company, what your vision is, and share your passion about the organization. The best candidates will want to work in an organization that is energized with people who are fun to be around. If you don’t reflect a positive vibe to the candidate, you are minimizing your chances for success.

Fishing: Go Where the Fish Are; Recruiting: Go Where the Talent Is

Leaders and managers of successful companies have the ability to attract and retain impressive talent.
Now that the behaviors and specification for the position have been established, let’s consider where and how we will search for this new hire. If you are one of the people in your company responsible for hiring, you should always have your antennae up for potential talent. Listed here are some of the many sources for new employees:

1. Referrals from existing employees are often a great source. Employees often know if the new person would be a good fit and wouldn’t want to risk recommending someone with whom they would not want to work. Many companies find it effective to offer reward programs for referrals from employees.

2. Vendors and customers can often recommend people to your company.

3. Professional associations and industry groups often have “position-wanted” ads.

4. Online resources such as Monster or Craig’s List and many others can be helpful, but it can also be tedious to sift and sort through the candidates.

5. Cultivating relationships with local high schools, tech centers or universities can be very effective. Given a choice, most candidates like to go with an employer that they know of or have even been an intern with.

6. Open houses with a recruiting theme can work, too. Using an enthusiastic employee as a tour guide can be a great way to woo and win potential talent.

7. Classified ads work but are not as effective as they once were. With the advent of the Internet, which is much more cost-effective, newspaper classifieds have lost some of their appeal. The exception to the print media would be advertising in trade publications. These are often very effective because they are targeted to the appropriate and necessary audience.

8. Executive search firms can work quite well but are usually employed for higher level management and leadership positions. The upside is that you can more effectively target the skill sets you want and don’t have to do all the “heavy lifting” associated with the search process and qualifying candidates.

9. Pay attention to local business activity for local plant closings, downsizings or businesses that are moving out of your area. Call the human resources department at these places and see if they are assisting their employees in finding new positions.

10. Contact local outplacement counselors on a regular basis. These folks have a constant supply of clients looking for jobs.

Persistence and Luck

Once the field of candidates has been narrowed down, there are some additional tools that can be used to gather more information about your candidate to increase your odds of a successful hire. These tools come in the form of assessments by organizations such as Wonderlic, Meyers Briggs, Gallup, Total View, DISC and many others.

Industrial psychologist can also be helpful in assessing a candidate’s appropriateness for your organization.
Don’t overlook a valuable internal resource. Most companies have at least one person that has what I call “big antennae.” For the more technically minded, this would be the person with a high EQ or emotional quotient. These are the people that have an almost uncanny ability to read other people. These folks can prevent the company from making bad hires. Find a way to integrate them into your interviewing process.

Finally, a word about persistence and luck. The recruiting and interview process can be immensely rewarding or very frustrating. When the search takes a long time and the organization is working short-handed, it is frustrating. Occasionally, when everything comes together and the position is filled quickly with an excellent candidate, there seems to be an element of luck. Keeping your eyes and ears open for talent and consistently following a well defined process will increase your opportunity for a “lucky” hire.

Ed. note: Reed Felton provides innovative coaching tools and effective employee feedback systems to small businesses. Prior to his role as a consultant, Felton worked for TJ Hale for over 27 years — holding positions ranging from project manger to president/COO.