5 Steps for Designing Your Employee Selection Process

Step 2 - Job Simulations, Pre-hire Assessment Tests and Measurement 

The best way to determine candidate fit for a particular job is by taking a holistic approach to your assessments and measuring three key areas – knowledge and ability, job relevant skills, and personality and motivation. Measuring just one area leaves other areas uncovered.  

Using a variety of assessments provides a holistic approach to your measurement process: 

• Simulations or situational judgment tests evaluate job relevant skills by putting candidates in scenarios that require them to perform the job.
  
  
• Personality assessments and biographical data testing measure motivational fit – the attitudes and behaviors around a specific job role. 
  
  
• Problem-solving or knowledge and ability assessments ask questions that get at verbal and written communication skills or logic and numerical skills. The goal here is to determine whether a candidate can look at information, absorb and apply it back to resolve a problem or situation. 

While a well-structured interview can be very effective, it is difficult to get answers that are as reliable as those provided through other types of assessments that identify the candidate's skill set in detail. Taking a holistic approach using a variety of assessment tools will result in stronger outcomes for your hiring process. 

Step 3 -  Improve In-Person Interviewing with Consistency and Measurement

Improving face to face interviews requires making the process more measurement driven than interpretive. The challenge is that organizations often have different people conducting interviews with different skill levels and different approaches.  

Reduce variance by creating a consistent interview process that includes an interview guide with standardized questions. Interviewers should not make up their own questions. 

In addition interview questions should have anchors, such as answers on a scale of 1-5, with descriptions of what a 1 looks like vs. what a 5 looks like. 

Take the time to train interviewers because this will greatly improve the candidate experience. Put them through mock interviews and have them rate the interviewee. Analyze how scores differ among interviewers who are rating the same candidate. Use that information for additional training and insight into continually improving your interview process.     

Step 4 - drive the CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE – Observations, feelings and Perceptions – at every touchpoint in the employee selection process

Think about the candidate experience as you design your system. The candidate experience refers to the observations, feelings reactions and perceptions the person experiences during the recruitment and selection process, including while completing pre-hire assessments. How are you going to interact with the candidate through the process? What are they going to experience? Often candidates can dictate how they approach your company.  

Be sure to follow up with candidates. Create service level agreements between your recruiting team and the hiring managers so clear standards and expectations are in-place. Establish a coherent process through which everyone who comes in contact with a candidate knows what to do and how to act, building in the appropriate follow-up. Always remember the job candidate has already viewed and reacted to a job description, so stay on course at every touchpoint – recruitment, pre hire assessment, interview and selection. Sometimes, after face to face interviews, a job candidate seems to be a better fit for a different job, but be careful about confusing the person by shifting course. There is time to discuss a different job by starting a new selection process. The one thing you don't want to do is inadvertently chase a qualified job candidate away via a confusing and unfocused selection process, creating a poor candidate experience. It happens all the time! 

Step 5 - conduct WORKFLOW MODELING of pre-hire processes to optimize efficiency and results

Most pre-hire processes traditionally involve three steps – reviewing applications, interviewing and onboarding. Recruiters tend to spend a lot of time interviewing. Is their effort efficient and producing desired human resources results? For example, they may interview 100 candidates and 50 are going to pass into the next pre employment stage.

When technology and data come into play in the employee selection process, the recruiter’s job becomes much easier. Using an automated pre-hire assessment such as personality testing or simulations, you can significantly reduce you interview population. Now instead of talking to 100 candidates, recruiters are talking to 56. And, these candidates are more qualified.   

Using automated assessments before you engage in interviews will help you move more candidates through the process more efficiently.  Spending time modeling your recruiting workflow will ultimately uncover the best hiring process for your company. 

What are the steps for selecting and hiring the highest quality employees?

The intersection of recruiting, sourcing, and quality of hire offers opportunities to create a more effective employee selection process for your organization. Understanding the relationship of these human resources processes in your organization helps you leverage negotiations with your suppliers and helps you reduce spending in areas that are not delivering.

Need some additional guidance? Download your free copy of the eBook below, or schedule a free consultation with one of our talent selection specialists today.