Post 2: Individuals Vs Groups in the Recruitment Process

Hi again everyone! 

Today is an article relating to the use of more than one person in the recruitment process. It is aimed mainly at businesses, but I thought it may be an interesting read for you all. Take a look. I hope you find it as interesting as I hoped!

Hiring Solo vs Hiring Committee: How To Get The Best Hiring Results

Whether you are the only human resource professional at your company or a recruiter working independently, have you stopped to consider if it's a good idea to hire alone? It’s no easy task sourcing, reviewing, and interviewing applicants for every job -- let alone be the only person making these types of decisions. Think about when you work on an important project. Are you the only person who ever weighs in on the process? The answer is probably no but even given the importance of hiring, it's often a solo job. If we know multiple opinions leads to better work outputs, why aren't we applying the same strategy to recruitment?

The risks and benefits of hiring solo

There’s a lot at stake when it comes to hiring people. We’ve all been unfortunate enough to have made at least one bad hire in our career. It’s a costly and stressful experience. A CareerBuilder survey estimated that around 41 percent of businesses admitted to making a bad hire and it cost them between $25,000 to $50,000 in lost productivity and replacement costs. It cannot be understated enough then that hiring must be conducted strategically and carefully. It can be beneficial at times to make a hiring decision using one’s own resources and experience, and then there are other times when it is more risky to do so.

Hiring alone creates some risks to the organization. First, it can introduce unintentional bias to the hiring decision. Because recruitment is evaluating people’s skills and other human attributes, it’s easy to make a certain impression of others based on our own values and ideas about stereotypes. In many cases, this can diminish our capacity to hire for diversity, which puts the organization at risk for EEOC violations and poor retention.

Another risk of hiring alone is that it reduces one’s time for sourcing other candidates and keeping them engaged in the process. Face to face interviews and assessments and background checks are very time consuming, as are candidate follow-ups and new hire processing. This can mean great candidates are falling through the cracks and being picked up by the competition.

But big benefit of hiring alone is that it is a matter of business necessity to make a decision about a candidate swiftly and with a knowledgeable background of hiring many people over the years. If you are confident in a candidate and don’t need validation other than what you have seen already, then it can be more beneficial to hire on your own. This is undeniably the easiest and fastest approach to hiring, so long as you understand the limitations of trusting only one opinion.

What are the pros and cons of using a hiring committee?

The other option when it comes to hiring is to pick a co-interviewer or select a group of people from your organization who are objective thinkers, seasoned at hiring, and good judges of character to form a strategic hiring committee. This is not a new idea, but one that is increasing in use. Large corporations like Amazon, Apple, and Google have been using hiring committees successfully for at least the last few years. But even if you have a small company, a hiring committee can put more eyes on the resumes of applicants to make better hiring decisions.

Group hiring works well when there are key roles to fill in the organization. For example, a management level candidate or a new department position rather than a lower level job like that of an assistant. These roles often requires the insight of several people who can share what they know as being the best skills and personality traits to look for. Given these positions often have multiple hiring rounds anyways, it's easy to bring in other voices to get a group opinion on candidates. This can be particularly helpful when there are multiple strong candidates in consideration.

A negative impact of a hiring committee is during rapid growth cycles when large numbers of employees need to be hired for entry level work. This is best left up to a few seasoned recruiters and the HR hiring manager to decide, otherwise things can be slowed down in details. Not to mention, in a rapid growth phase, it might be difficult to coordinate the schedules and resources needed to free up the hiring committee's time.

The trick is to find a balance between the time it takes to use a hiring committee and the importance of the hire. You don't want to bog down your talent pipeline by doing this for everyone but in some instances, hiring alone might lead to the wrong decision.

How do you create a hiring committee?

If you're going to try hiring with a little help, where do you get started? Here are some tips to set you up for success:

1) Understand what you need: Make a shortlist of the knowledge or background you need on your committee. You might need a member of HR present, possibly a coworker of the new hire, their manager, and maybe the department head. Or maybe the role has technical elements you can't vet alone that requires assistance from a different department. Be clear about who you need on your team and why so that everyone understands what they're bringing to the team.

2) Don't invite the whole company: Committees should be large enough to gather insights from but small enough to be manageable. A few people is the sweet spot rather than a large team. You want everyone's voice to be heard, otherwise why have them on the team at all?

3) Figure out roles: If you're going to be interviewing together, come up with a game plan. Who asks questions about past performance and who dives deeper into personality and behaviour? It's important not to overlap on interview questions as this creates a poor candidate experience.

4) Debrief together: It can be easy to focus only on the interview but once the candidate is gone, the committee should meet to debrief the interviews of the day. The sooner this can happen after the interviews are complete the better given that memory can grow more unreliable as time goes on. While you can gather feedback individually, it's better to meet in person as the discussion can sometimes trigger new insights when done in a group format.

Thanks everyone. I hoped you enjoyed the article. Both language and content.

Best regards as always and have a great weekend.

Post 1: Common Business Expressions

Hello everyone!

As a little extra help for all of you in addition to your classes, I will provide an article each week relating to interesting (I hope!) topics in business. This will be either useful language points in English, or an interesting article in English related to your work in some way.

The idea is that you read these blogs and make a comment in English, either about the topic or using some of the language presented.

I hope it is useful and enjoyable for you. Good luck everyone!

Best regards as always,

Andrew

Todays language topic is '20 common business expressions at work':

• Blue Collar Worker - someone who works with their hands or does manual labor. For example, construction workers, steel workers, plumbers, electricians, etc.

Eg. "Donald Trump won the election in 2016 because he managed to get the majority of blue-collar workers to vote for him."

• Call it a day - to stop working for the day

Eg. "I've been working since 7 this morning. I think it's about time to call it a day"

• Cut corners - to do something the cheapest or easiest way; to take a shortcut. Usually at the expense of quality.

Eg. "When construction companies cut corners it typically costs lives."

• Diamond in the rough - something or someone that has a lot of potential but lacks a few final touches or qualities

Eg. "Juan is a real diamond in the rough. He's got a lot of talent with people but just needs to work a little on his work ethic."

• Game plan - a plan or strategy for doing or achieving something

Eg. "The game plan for the week is to call every client personally to get their opinion"

• Get the ball rolling - to start something or to start a project

Eg. "We need to get the ball rolling on this project asap. It's due in October and it's already August."

• In the black - to be making a profit

Eg. "After three years of losses the company is finally in the black again."

• In the red - to be losing money

Eg. "With all these unexpected health bills we're going to be in the red this month."

• Loophole - an ambiguity or mistake in a law which allows one to evade or avoid the the law to an advantage

Eg. "After the tax codes changed some private investors were able to save a lot of money by finding some loopholes in the system"

• No brainer - a decision that is obvious or super easy to make

Eg. "Betting on the Chilean national soccer team versus the USA was a no brainer. Of course they were going to win."

• On a roll - to have a successful or lucky period.

Eg. "We've been on a roll the last three months. The sales numbers are through the roof. "

• On top of something - to be aware or in control of a situation

Eg. "Don't worry, Steve. I'm on top of the situation and I'll take care of it"

• See eye to eye - to agree with each other

Eg. "I do not always see eye to eye with my partner but we always reach an agreement."

• Small talk - polite social conversation about unimportant matters

Eg. "On Monday mornings it's good to make small talk with your colleagues. Ask them about their weekends, the weather, etc."

• State of the art - very modern, using the most recent methods or technology

Eg. "The new Tesla model was made using state of the art technology"

• Touch base - to get in touch or contact someone

Eg. " I'll work on this half of the project and you on the other and we'll touch base in a few days."

• Under the table - transacted in a secret or hidden manner

Eg. "They offered him money under the table to change his mind."

• Uphill battle - very difficult - requiring a lot of effort to overcome obstacles.

Eg. "It was an uphill battle to get the liquor license. We had to find someone with a contact in the municipality."

• White Collar worker - someone who works in an office or other professional environment.

Eg. "Universities typically prepare their students to become white-collar workers."

• Word of mouth - when people tell other people about a product or service without any other marketing.

Eg. "60% of our clients come to us based on word of mouth recommendation."

That's all for now. Have a great weekend and please come back next week for the next post.