Top 12 Hiring Tips: Find Better Candidates for your Available Job
(This story was originally published at The Nook Online)
Establishing a pipeline of interested candidates, and actively recruiting, interviewing, and hiring those candidates, might be your organization’s best way to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in your staff workforce.
Here are ten of the top ways to integrate better, more thoughtful practices into your hiring procedures in an effort to build more inclusionary practices into your overall company culture.
Tip 1) Evaluate the job title
Look at current job-seeking tools like indeed.com, glassdoor.com, and other benchmarks for your industry to make sure your current job title, description, and range of responsibilities is appropriate and normal for that role. It might be a modification of the title or level, i.e. the difference between “Senior Product Manager” vs. “Product Manager” vs. “Project Manager” vs. “Product Associate” that will make the difference in who applies.
Tip 2) Be thoughtful with language
“Rock stars, ninjas, unicorns” are not adequate for this particular job. Identify the bulleted list of skills required, as well as desired background experience. Consider the implications of your language: if you hire for a “unicorn” or if you hire for a “collaborative team player,” then think about what types of responses you’ll receive: unicorns vs. team players.
Tip 3) Identify and make explicit any assumptions
Is travel included in this job? Is there a need to lift heavy objects? Is this a remote job or an on-site job? Salaried, contract, temp-to-hire? List out all relevant aspects in order to attract the correct type of applicants, as well as make transparent the implicit assumptions of who is able to work in this role.
Tip 4) Publish the salary range
It’s fair to your applicant to offer a salary range. By mentioning that the salary is “negotiable, open to experience” you may cause certain qualified applicants to not apply. By being clear about requirements and/or bands inside that role, you can come to a quicker agreement with the perfect applicants who has understood salary from the beginning.
Tip 5) Clearly list benefits
For many workers, health, vision, dental, retirement matching, flex time, parental leave, PTO, holidays, and add-ons like fitness, continuous education and training, or technology budgets are a major perk.
Tip 6) Encourage underrepresented minorities to apply
Add additional language inside the post to increase your candidate pool. This may be as simple as adding a sentence that encourages applicants who identify as an under-represented community member to apply.
Tip 7) Explicitly comply with federal, state, and local guidelines
Make 100% sure your organization complies with any guidelines regarding harassment and discrimination. Here is some sample language about hiring committee consideration:
(from https://greenamerica.org/were-hiring)
Green America is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without discrimination regarding: actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, related medical conditions, breastfeeding, or reproductive health disorders), age (18 years of age or older), marital status (including domestic partnership and parenthood), personal appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, family responsibilities, genetic information, disability, matriculation, political affiliation, citizenship status, credit information or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. Harassment on the basis of a protected characteristic is included as a form of discrimination and is strictly prohibited.
Tip 8) Focus on your organization’s culture: mission, vision, and values
Culture is one of the biggest determinants of if your candidate will continue through with the process of applying with you. How do you attract high-quality staff people? Your current organization mission, vision, and publicly-stated values will make a difference. What does the company, team, or project stand for? Say it loud and proud and make sure your applicant understands your organizational values. A blog post, “about” page, or video linked inside the job application will make your values clear.
Tip 9) Circulate the listing to diverse audiences
Reach out to job boards or community groups that are focused on your specific area, industry, or desired applicant pool. Go beyond your existing networks and publish widely in order to receive the greatest amount of circulation. Search for disability-friendly, diversity-friendly, veteran-serving, remote-focused, and women-focused job boards, Slack channels, and influencers within specific communities.
Tip 10) Identify scoring in advance
Have a sheet that lists out the pointing system you will be using to evaluate applicants. Feel free to include this in the job description so as to surface only candidates who will be able to speak to your desired points.
Tip 11) Same interviewers, same questions
To make a fair assessment, have all the interviewers ask the same questions from all the finalists. Use your existing points chart to compare notes and evaluate against the organizational mission, vision, values, and desires for this hire.
Tip 12) Offer alternate ways of interviewing
If a whiteboard walkthrough, a 15–20 minute brainstorming exercise, a video or written component, a teleconference demonstration, or other method is required for success in the role, it is appropriate and understandable to ask for this during the interview process. For example, if the role requires teleconferencing, allow for one of the interviews for the finalists to be held on the teleconferencing software needed.
By following the above and hiring in the spirit of openness, transparency, accountability and a shared vision of what success for the role looks like, you’ll be sure to attract a dream candidate who participates and meshes well with the existing mission, vision, and values.
