#1- Solutions for the Top 3 Problems We Solve for Hiring Managers: First Solution

In celebration of the One Eighty Collective website launch (if you missed it, check it out here), we’re diving into some Hot Topics for Hiring Managers, providing solutions for a Hiring Manager’s Top 3 Hiring Problems.

Today’s Topic #1: Experience is Everything

Problem: Your best candidates are falling out of the process before you get to a decision

The Real Issue: You’re not creating a consistent candidate experience, your team doesn’t know what to evaluate, or both

Solution: Create a succinct, structured interview process with the right interviewing team, clear decision criteria, and a bias-free scoring system

Opportunity Cost: Unless you intentionally create a great experience for candidates and prepare your hiring team for success, you're unintentionally creating a poor candidate experience and indecision amongst your hiring team.

You may (or may not) be surprised how often Hiring Managers aren’t sure (a) who should be a part of the interview process and (b) what each person should be evaluating. This is why we help these clients build an interview rubric:

• Create a comprehensive list of the role’s needs: essential hard and soft skills, specific experience sets, personal traits, career growth, etc.
• Bonus tip: If your recruiter is screening them first, you can share this list and eliminate the need to talk to all but 3-4 pre-screened candidates.
• Identify who on your team is equipped to assess the items on your list - this should include a short list of people they’ll work with directly and those with whom they’ll work cross-functionally.
• If your interviewer list is over 3-4 people, think about who may work well as an interviewing team and pair them up to shorten your process.
• Provide each interviewer with specifics on exactly what they’ll be evaluating and guide them to ask questions about these topics rather than have an open discussion about the candidate’s career history.
• To avoid a redundant interview process that makes your team seem ill-prepared, make sure your members of your team aren’t asking the same questions over and over (i.e., tell me about your current role, a time when you had to make a tough decision, etc).
• Create a concise scoring method that leaves no room for gray area.
• Make sure each interviewer provides feedback within 24 hours.
• Bonus tip: We like to book interviews for 45 minutes but block the calendar for 60 minutes to give each interviewer time to fill out the scorecard.
• Give candidates an overview of the interview process and provide them an update candidate at each stage, even if (and sometimes especially when) there’s a delay.
• Bonus tip: Ghosting a candidate is never acceptable and will ensure your company has a poor reputation; it’s HOW feedback is shared that matters. Your recruiter should deliver feedback that demonstrates your team cares to close the loop as well as deliver valuable insight to help them in future interviews.

This might sound like a lot of work upfront, but we can tell you from experience - a little extra work on the front end saves you hours on hours in the end. This, along with our other best practices, is how we save our clients 50+ hours per search.

Our tagline at One Eighty Collective is “an elevated recruiting experience” because we’ve spent years honing our processes to provide an optimal experience for each person involved.