How well a candidate performs in each step of the hiring process matters. How gracefully they move through it matters just as much.
An interview is not a process. An assessment is not a process. Those might be steps in a process, but a process through which a candidate must proceed successfully includes a series of steps, followed in order, for any successful hire. A candidate can be bounced out of the process for any number of reasons, but cannot be hired unless they were successful all the way through.
The idea of a disciplined process the hiring team commits to follow is about more than the consistency of the candidate experience. Each step works as a gate of permission to proceed to the next step, each step carries its own significance, and when the hiring team sees all candidates proceed similarly, a candidate who stumbles, falls, or shines stands out as meaningful.
Not every gate is absolute. Perhaps someone didn't do badly, but wasn't stellar in an early step, so the team chooses to allow them to proceed. If performance is mediocre or poor in the next step, the candidate gets bounced. If they recover miraculously and completely stun the team with extraordinary performance, they continue to proceed, but the early misstep is not forgotten. It remains a data point.
When there is a process, we can look for patterns. No one is perfect, but the great thing about a disciplined process is this: while someone might be able to hold it together to pull off one satisfactory interview, if they are a weak candidate, the process will expose this.
The process our clients follow looks something like this, perhaps with some variations:
- Define the job: This provides absolute clarity for the candidate to understand what success looks like in the role and how their performance will be measured quarterly.
- Create the avatar: Once The Job Scorecard™ is defined, the avatar (ideal person) is created to identify the key characteristics required for someone to be successful in the job.
- Post the position and sort through resumes: Look for permission-to-play hard skills, not the holiday wish list.
- Phone screen: Explore their understanding of The Job Scorecard™, verify the hard skills, confirm salary requirements, and look for outlying concerns (gaps in employment, frequent departures due to personal reasons, etc.).
- Core Values Email Exercise: This exercise vets candidates against your culture and allows candidates who match your culture well to become more excited about the role.
- First Interview: This is behavior-based and conducts the initial screen for the characteristics identified in the avatar.
- Assessments: Multiple science-based assessments explore the degree of fit with the avatar. No one is perfect, so we must identify what potential gaps exist.
- Performance Checks: These are references who address the behavior gaps exposed in the assessments. The key is conducting these before the second interview. Since the team has only met the candidate once, they have not yet fallen in love and are not excusing or dismissing the gaps as potential issues.
- Secondary Interviews: Explore the gaps from assessments and the information shared in Performance Checks: does the candidate have good self-awareness, have they committed to a development plan, have they adopted coping mechanisms?
As you reflect on the success of the candidate, look not only at the results of each step of the process, but at how gracefully they move through it.
These are common warning signs indicating issues likely to arise in the real work environment.
- Are they on time, prepared, and engaged for phone screens and interviews?
- With the Core Values Email Exercise, our clients ask the candidate to tell them when the client can expect to receive it. Do they make their own deadline? With room to spare? Barely? Can they get their point across in an email? Does it look like they made an effort, with specific examples?
- How responsive are their emails throughout the process? Have they applied acceptable grammar, spelling, and structural norms?
- Do they follow the guide to providing references? Is getting references from them like pulling teeth? Every great candidate has past supervisors and co-workers who adore them and would be honored to provide a reference. No one should call HR for a reference, so if you get the excuse "my employers won't let anyone give references," they haven't cultivated any close relationships in those organizations or impressed anyone enough. If a reference is unavailable (vacation, etc.), how responsive are they in coming up with an alternate?
- In interviews, can they cite specific examples of situations where important characteristics of the avatar have been demonstrated, or do they constantly talk in generalities or philosophical ramblings?
Takeaways
Successful candidates are fully invested in the entire process. If they believe this is a great opportunity for them in a culture where they will thrive, the candidate will do their best to keep the process moving, respond professionally and promptly to requests, and work diligently to impress you at every step. The right candidate becomes obvious. If you are thinking about a candidate and feel they weren't bad in a step or two, or you are debating whether you were truly impressed, the internal debate tells you all you need to know.
If your team wants help building and holding to a process like this one, The Hiring Process Coach™ is how The Metiss Group works alongside clients to do exactly this.
