Finding the right person to fill a vacant position takes time. It’s hard work.

It will be tempting to take shortcuts to draw the hiring process to a quick conclusion. That’s understandable. Your to-do list is long. You need someone new as soon as possible.

From what I have observed from working with interview panels over the years, there are two points during the process when panels are most likely to succumb to the temptation to cut corners and speed up the process.

But these are also points that are critical to hiring the right person. Rushing or even skipping these steps imperils successful outcomes. You risk rendering the care and effort you invested up to then into a waste of time.

When you consider all that goes into finding someone to fill a vacancy, you don’t want the quality of your decision to be compromised because you decided to cut a corner or two.

Recruitment begins with you deciding what is required to succeed in the job. You focus on your current top performers in the same or similar roles. What makes them successful? What you learn from observing their performance can help you define the competencies and attitudes the job requires. There are also educational and training requirements to consider.

Early in the process, you should assemble an interview panel that will assist you in planning the recruitment, in identifying the topics to be explored during the interview and when checking references, and in deciding the right person to hire. Panels members should be selected with care, considering the expertise each person could bring to the process.

You write questions that will require candidates to describe times when they experienced situations similar to what they will deal with if hired. Write other questions to determine their values and how they have influenced decisions about what they did in previous jobs.

Next, you need to make potential applicants aware of the vacancies by advertising in the right places. Utilize both formal and informal channels to get the word out.

Reviewing resumes and application forms is tedious, but it’s important in deciding which applicants possess the training, competencies and attitudes you require. To speed up the process, some managers will spend too little time assessing the information that applicants provide or only look at a few resumes before deciding on a shortlist.

Don’t be that manager. Don’t miss hiring the right person just because you didn’t look at their resume or didn’t analyze it thoroughly.

Interviews take time. All members of the interview panel must clear time on their already busy schedules to participate. To provide meaningful input later in the process, panels members should attend all interviews.

Allot sufficient time for each interview to explore all the topics associated with on-the-job success. Learn how each candidate has responded previously to situations similar to those they may encounter if hired. This requires asking questions, probing to learn more and keeping good notes that can be consulted following the interview.

Most managers and supervisors devote appropriate time to reach the milestone of completing candidate interviews. But with the end in sight, they squander what they have achieved by hurrying the process. This creates a real danger of not hiring the right person.

A successful panel invests time in assessing how candidates responded to each question. It carefully compares what the candidates said to the criteria that defines outstanding, adequate or unsatisfactory responses.

Avoid quickly deciding which candidate is “best” with only a cursory consideration of what was said during the interview. This is hiring based on “gut feelings,” which has never been the astute formula for hiring.

Each panel member should independently score candidates on each question before sharing their rankings with others. No candidate is likely to score 5/5 on every question and panel members won’t always agree in their assessment of candidates. What members hear from candidates will be nuanced. The goal should be to reach consensus about the top candidates, pending receipt of information from reference checks.

The next-to-last step is to check references, which can be tempting to skip because you have already gotten to know candidates during interviews. What could references tell you that you don’t already know?

Lots!

To ensure that reference checks will yield information that helps you with your decision making, you may need to get past the positive messages references want to deliver—often scripted by the candidates themselves. Ask questions that are relevant to your position.

When the right questions are asked, references will either confirm your assessment of the candidate or provide information that could cause you to rethink your preliminary judgments. Ask questions that explore the same topics explored during interviews. Do references recall what happened during examples of past behaviour that the candidate offered the same way the candidate described them during the interview?

Data from reference checks in hand, the panel should meet once more. Did what they hear from references confirm their preliminary choice to hire? If not, where do they need to go next? Does another candidate now appear to be a better choice? If not, it may be necessary to repeat the process.

Returning to the point I made at the beginning of this article, hiring is hard work! It takes time.

When a participant observed at the end of a full-day Interview Right to Hire Right workshop that, “This sounds like a lot of work,” I reminded him of the words of visionary automaker Lee Iacocca: “The most important thing any manager can do is hire the right new people.”

Interview Right to Hire Right workshop participants go from identifying a vacancy to making a job offer, and beyond. Contact Nelson (nmscott@telus.net or phone/text 780-232-3828) to schedule an Interview Right to Hire Right workshop for your leadership team or to learn more.