Every hiring decision stands on three legs – the recruiter, the hiring manager and the candidate.
Any leg of the stool that is too short or too long will cause an imbalance- at best lots of rework, at worst missing out on the best candidate.
Here’s what each leg is about:
The Recruiter (those who partner with the business to recruit) is responsible for attracting the right talent.
The Hiring Manager (whom the role ultimately reports to) has to properly screen and select candidates then sell the position to secure the best person.
The third leg is the Candidate. They are responsible for showing the value they will provide to the business.
Too often each of these legs don’t measure up, some too long, some too short. Realising that, here’s how you can work on evening them out,
ISSUE #1
Mismatch in understanding between the recruiter and hiring manager. Whilst recruiters think they have a “high” to “very high” understanding of the jobs they recruit for, hiring managers disagree, believing recruiters have, at best, a “low” to “moderate” understanding. Yikes!
Problems That Result
Recruiters are posting dull job ads, speaking to candidates with confidence about the job descriptions, while hiring managers think they’re underselling and misrepresenting the jobs.
Candidates don’t get the right information to understand whether the role and company are a good fit and the business gets the wrong candidates to select from.
Hiring Managers aren’t pleased with the resumes landing on their desks, after HR screening. This incentivises hiring managers to rescreen candidates causing much rework and waste and severely erodes trust between them and the recruiter.
What To Do
Develop your dealership recruitment playbook. For every role in the dealership.
This means recruiters and hiring managers developing and agreeing on 5-6 competencies per role and accompanying screening and interview questions.
Let’s be honest this sounds like a big job, particularly for a small business.
To make it easier we’ve done the hack work. Here you’ll find competencies for over 14 dealership roles along with more than 75 screening and interview questions.
All you need do next is review these as a team and refine to fit your particular dealership. For example you’ll want to add years of work experience, specific qualifications and other essential requirements as part of the screening process. Here’s a video which demonstrates how we’ve generated these questions and how to include them in the recruitment workflow.
This way both recruiter and hiring manager are exactly on the same page. You literally have a recruitment playbook to deploy when a vacancy arises.
ISSUE # 2
When communication is lacking, the process is severely compromised and so are the hiring results.
Problems That Result
Hiring Managers are liable to change their mind midway, or abandon the process altogether taking matters into their own hands.
Recruiters react with frustration having wasted time and effort sourcing and screening candidates. The much needed partnership between HR and the business can spiral into a them vs us battle.
Candidates pull out of the process altogether unwilling to wait around for lengthy interview cycles or cumbersome decision-making processes.
What To Do
Time to enact the ‘hiring protocol’.
Once a vacancy has been approved to fill, the recruiter and hiring manager should meet, best of all face to face. This preparatory meeting is critical and sets the scene for the entire process. Regular update meetings should occur throughout the process, at least weekly, with the final interview wash up meeting for candidate selection. Set dates in diaries for these catch ups, blocking out calendars for interviews and the final decision making meeting.
Below is a list of the types of questions and issues you’ll want to cover off at these meetings before and during the process.
Think you already know the answers? Think again, such discussions will invariably offer new insights.
Initial Preparatory Meeting
- Agree on the recruitment workflow (here’s one that will help) and role responsibilities
- Discuss how work will be distributed given the vacancy and brainstorm any work-arounds eg temporary staff
- Gain agreement on how you plan to deal with each of these questions,
- Why do you need to add this position?
- What are the top 5-6 competencies and what screening and interview questions to ask candidates?
- Is the job permanent, temporary?
- Is it full-time, part-time, casual and would flexible work arrangements be considered?
- Who does the role report to and interact with often?
- When is the desired start date?
- What is the pay, compensation, bonus and any other financial benefits?
- Is travel distance from the dealership a consideration, would you relocate someone and pay for expenses?
- What employee benefits are offered?
- What are the essential role requirements- experience, qualifications?
- From what range of industries would you consider applicants?
- Are there candidate demographics to consider- gender, race etc?
- Where should the role be advertised and should there be active sourcing of candidates?
- Develop an agreed job posting and job description
- Who will make the final selection decision?
During
- Progress reports on – the number of applicants, those who are suitable and qualified- do they meet essential screening criteria, to what extent do they possess the competencies you’ve agreed upon?
- Agreement on who should be shortlisted for interview
- Scheduling interviews and final wash up meeting
- Any obstacles or issues that have arisen
After- Interview Wash Up Meeting
- Review all data points- screening and interview. Discuss all ratings, clarify and resolve any interviewer differences.
- Make a recommendation on selection 1stchoice and back up choice or is there a need to go back to market.
- Define dates for reference checks, sending of final offer.
- How could the process be improved next time?
ISSUE # 3
Different hiring goals. For hiring managers, it’s about time-to-fill. For recruiters it’s about quality-of-hire. In reality there’s a need to keep an eye on both. To put things into perspective, a year from now, you really won’t remember whether it took four or 8 weeks to fill that job, but you’ll live with the quality of the hire for a long time.
Problems That Result
The Hiring Managers urgency to hire means it’s easy to get caught in the industry-experience trap. Industry experience is not only a hiring shortcut it’s also the quickest way to reduce your talent pool both in numbers and diversity. And do you really want to recycle employees from your competitors?
Recruiter workload keeps growing, the greater the number of hiring mistakes. New hire turnover is costly and is directly related to the quality of your recruitment process. One dealership calculated $AUD 37,000 as the average cost of a hiring mistake. This adds up when you’ve got turnover rates as high as 38% like they did.
Candidates are less likely to apply as they observe the high turnover or read negative company reviews from disgruntled new hires.
What To Do
Keep top of mind – great talent isn’t going to wait around for lengthy interview cycles or cumbersome decision-making processes. By preparing and planning as just described, the process will be far more efficient.
To really fast forward the process without compromising quality, look to automate many of the these processes, for example online screening and interview templates, automatic candidate screening, interview scheduling, scoring and candidate feedback . See how this is achieved with the all-in-one solution, RemiPeople an automated recruitment business tool.
ISSUE #4
Knowledge gap. Hiring managers frequently lack recruiting expertise, yet they are responsible for high-stakes hiring decisions.
Problems That Result
Many Hiring Managers aren’t clear on what the ideal candidate looks like and how to assess this. Nor are they prepared for interviews ; they often wing it, meaning hiring selection is a high-stakes game of chance. The results – turning away the very candidates your business needs.
Should hiring managers engage in asking Candidates unethical interview questions there is a high risk of damaging company reputation making it very difficult to attract top talent.
A problem for Recruiters and the business, as this can lead to non-compliance with regulations around discrimination.
What To Do
Regular training to current and aspiring managers on how to hire is an important part of the puzzle.
However I’d argue it’s equally if not more important to provide managers, with hiring checklists, interview guides and the like that will really assist them to improve.
The issue is always will they use them?
Another option is to consider a recruiting software program where all roles are processed. This encourages best practice hiring as hiring teams are guided through each step of the process, giving you relaible quality and efficiency.