Considerations for a Solid Hiring Process

A solid hiring process protects you from one of the most expensive mistakes a business can make. Hiring seems straightforward when you need someone: develop a job description, ask around, post the job, ask the right questions, and make a decision.

Different roles come with their own challenges, but in general, a mistake in this decision can be detrimental. This article covers why you need a solid hiring process, the red flags to watch for, and the considerations to build into your own process, with a free weighted hiring scorecard to keep every candidate on the same scale.

What Happens When You Hire the Wrong Person?

You may end up with someone who is not a good fit no matter how much qualifying you attempt, but that is exactly why you need to do everything possible to find a great fit.

If you do not have a solid plan and process, the new hire could be unmotivated, unqualified for the role requirements, and a negative influence on everyone around them. A bad hire can cost you a lot in lost productivity, lost clients, and lost time, damage your reputation, and bring on unexpected legal costs.

The direct cost alone is significant. Apollo Technical cites the U.S. Department of Labor estimate that a bad hire can cost up to 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings, about $24,000 for an $80,000 role, before counting the damage to the team.

Before we get into the considerations to build into your process, here are the red flags to watch for before and during the interview.

10 Red Flags to Watch for During the Hiring Process

One red flag is not a verdict, but two or three together deserve a hard look. The scorecard below counts them for each candidate.

14 Considerations for a Solid Hiring Process

These are the considerations when you hire so you find the right person. Include all of these steps and exercises to give yourself the best chance of a good hire.

1. Determine the Must-Haves for the Position Up Front

It is useful to spell out the few things you absolutely need in a candidate ahead of time, along with a scoring system. That way, when you vet resumes, you are looking at the same list of must-haves for every candidate and not forgetting any. It helps to have a list for the company as a whole and one for the position.

According to Warren Buffett, you look for three qualities: intelligence, energy, and integrity, and they are non-negotiable. He believes that without integrity, it all falls apart. You can score each candidate from one to ten on each quality and decide how to proceed from there.

This summary of the Buffett rule, from Tom Searcy, shows what goes wrong when any one of the three is missing.

For a manager position, examples of must-haves would be strong analytical skills, specifically Microsoft Excel, examples of handling high-pressure deadlines, past experience managing a team, and familiarity with the budget process. Score each candidate as a starting point. Those who score highest would likely make your video interview list.

2. Write a Clear, Compelling Job Description

Be clear and upfront about the job responsibilities and tasks, while also being compelling. You want to attract candidates, but it has to be accurate. It is common to see what you are responsible for, but it is rare to see what success in the role looks like. Add a single sentence that captures it, so goals, roles, and responsibilities are all known before the candidate accepts.

3. Plan Your Recruiting Strategy

Asking trusted former coworkers and other networks can be great for finding candidates. Once that is exhausted, decide how you want to find more. Options range from contacting people yourself on LinkedIn, to job boards like Indeed and ZipRecruiter, to hiring an agency and outsourcing all of it.

4. Use Video Interviews to Screen Early

I recommend using software for this and asking a few key questions by video. It saves your time and theirs, and it gives you an idea of how people communicate before you ever meet them in person. These are usually up to ten questions, and you can customize what you ask.

5. Ask Questions That Really Make a Person Think

When I was hired at my first job as an analyst, I was put through the wringer with one difficult question after another, all about problem solving: hypothetical scenarios and math problems. Management stopped the interview abruptly at an hour and a half. By then I was completely soaked in sweat. It was so difficult.

I asked why it stopped, and they said, "Everyone else gave up by now." The interview was designed to find the quitters and weed them out. An analyst may have to put hours or days into solving a problem, so it was key to find someone who could do that and think through every possible solution.

6. Test the Candidate

Ask candidates to complete a test as part of the interview. Apple, for example, runs several technical interviews spread across its process. If you are hiring an analyst, make sure they have the basics and then some with a test project. Some tests are done on-site; others give the candidate a week to complete on their own. You see not only their skills, but also how timely they are and how serious they are about the position.

7. Watch Employment Gaps

This is controversial, but in my experience, candidates with spotty job histories have repeatedly proven to be poor hires. I know people have reasons for employment gaps, but I cannot stress enough doing your due diligence if you are considering a candidate with them. In my experience, 95% of the time there was a reason and I regretted the hire, so I tread lightly, despite having a gap in my own history at one point.

A one-time gap is generally much less of an issue than a trend. Look for patterns, such as repeated short stints that ended over conflicts with team members or leaders. Ask about gaps in a neutral way, and do not ask about protected reasons such as health, pregnancy, or family caregiving. Ideally, you will find someone who is currently employed and needs to be enticed away.

8. Look for Attitude

You can train someone on how to do things, depending on the level of experience you need. What you cannot easily train is curiosity and a desire to learn and excel. Someone with the right attitude and mindset is almost always preferable to someone who simply has the specific skill set.

9. Include Self-Reflection Questions

Follow Google’s lead and include questions that make people think about where they are, to make sure they are passionate about the position. Google encourages candidates to reflect on their skills, passions, and experience so it gets well-rounded people who are genuinely excited about the job.

10. Check Their Public Professional Profiles

You cannot ask every question in an interview, both because of time and because some questions could be discriminatory. You can, however, do some digging. LinkedIn, for example, can show more about a candidate’s experience and the groups and articles they engage with.

Be careful with what you see. Social media often reveals protected information such as religion, age, or family status, which must play no part in the decision. Some employers have someone outside the hiring decision do this review and pass along only job-related findings.

11. Ask Them About Your Company

See how interested candidates really are by how much they have looked into your company. Different roles call for different questions. A marketing candidate, for example, should be able to comment on your social media and ads. A salesperson should have some feedback on your product or service, because they should have checked out what they would be selling.

12. Hold Multiple Interviews

A candidate can have one great 30-minute interview. It is much harder to interact well with several people over an hour and more than one meeting. Because employees will work with this person, it works well to hold two separate interviews with yourself, other leaders, and other employees to get the whole picture.

When possible, hold at least one in-person interview. It shows you how they interact, and they get to see the team, the environment, and the culture.

I once worked with a team hiring for a receiving position in a warehouse. The candidate was out of state, so all the interviews were by video. They went great, and the person was very intelligent. The role required working on lifts and handling packages of around 100 pounds. The person was hired, showed up a few weeks later, and could not meet those physical requirements.

Walking the candidate through the warehouse in person, and asking directly whether they could perform the essential physical tasks of the role, would have caught it. That did not work out for anyone.

13. Consider Lunch Interviews

A lunch could be the second interview. Watch how polite they are, whether they get frustrated easily, how they interact with others, whether they let other people go first, and whether they can hold a conversation.

14. Score Every Candidate the Same Way

Gut feel after the last interview of the day is not a hiring process. Scoring every candidate against the same weighted must-haves keeps the decision fair and makes it easy to explain why one person got the offer.

Free Weighted Hiring Scorecard

The scorecard below turns the must-haves from consideration 1 into a weighted score out of 100. List your must-haves, give each a weight based on how much it matters, and score every candidate from 1 to 10. Add the red flags you noticed from the list above.

Integrity is treated as non-negotiable, in line with Buffett’s rule. In the example, Jordan has the highest raw score at 77.5 but only a 5 on integrity, so the recommendation is do not advance. Alex scores 77 with strong integrity and one red flag, so Alex advances. Sam, at 65, is kept as a backup.

Copy the scorecard to Excel, where the weighted scores and recommendations stay live SUMPRODUCT and IF formulas, or print it to bring to your hiring debrief.

Building Your Own Solid Hiring Process

Sometimes things just do not work out. But if you build a solid hiring process and consider every item in this article, you give yourself a fair chance at getting the right candidate. If you ignore any of them, you are taking chances on making a mistake in your decision.

Updoot’s applicant tracking keeps job descriptions, candidates, and interview notes in one place. Updoot is business management software for $5 per user per month.

Sources

The Cost of a Bad Hire and Red Flags to Avoid (Apollo Technical)

Warren Buffett on Integrity (Intecor International)

Apple Interview Process and Top Questions (Exponent)

8 Ways to Ensure You Hire the Right Candidate (Zippia)

How to Hire the Right Person (The New York Times)

How We Hire (Google Careers)