Reinvent Recruitment & Management - Part 2: Hire, Interview & Onboard

This is the second part of a three-post series about reinventing recruitment and management. In this second part we discuss the hiring portion of the recruitment process, including interviewing and onboarding.

Hiring

When hiring new employees, we naturally tend to rely on our gut feelings or instinctive awareness about candidates. Instinct, while it can be useful and necessary in certain situations, is too subjective and easily affected by individual biases to be consistently effective in hiring. Instinct is honed over many years of experience, but even then, it is still neither objective nor sharable. Utilizing a behavioral or personality assessment like the one of the GRI can offer surprising insight into candidates’ potential fit. It can also prevent us from making costly hiring mistakes.

Interviewing

The behavioral/emotional component of a job is the most difficult to assess with accuracy and objectivity, while the skills and experience necessary are relatively easy to identify. Referring to a candidate’s assessment gives us insight into how the individual likes to work, and helps us tailor our approach and attitude toward the candidate in order to engage them quickly and genuinely during the interview.

Defining the behavioral requirements of a position in detail before beginning the hiring process allows us to gauge how closely the candidate aligns with those requirements and choose questions that provide a fuller picture of the candidate and the job fit. This makes it easier to dig into their resume and ask questions that connect their behaviors, skills, and interests to the potential job.

In a situation where we’re selling the position to a candidate rather than just screening them, knowing the candidate’s profile helps present the job in the most positive light, while the job requirements clarify the behaviors that the candidate will need to develop in the new position.

Onboarding

There is no need to wait until problems surface to start building a great team. So often we just plug along until there are problems, and only then do we organize a retreat or a conflict- resolution workshop to fix them. The recurring expense of an ineffective team can be enormous.

Making wise and effective decisions about a team should start as early as the recruiting process, and then the onboarding time can be used to learn about team members’ differences and help the team work together more efficiently from day one.

When managers and team members are better aware of and appropriately educated about how they perform differently and the nature of their various positions, unnecessary friction can be avoided and the team is set on a better path for success. As always, the team’s manager plays a critical role in this process.

Explore how assessments like the one of the GRI can help you reinvent recruitment and management. Read chapter 11 of Lead Beyond Intuition: How to Build a High-Performing Organization. Order the book on Amazon today.