THE EDGE IN ACTION

Use the EDGE criteria to drive your hiring process.

For many business owners and managers, hiring is the single most difficult thing that they do. They know that they aren’t good at it and tend to put with poor performance because they fear that they will spend time and effort hiring a new employee who turns out to be no better than the one they are replacing.

They are effectively driven by fear of the “unknown incompetent” but this can be overcome by putting in place an effective hiring process. This comprises four relatively simple steps.

1. Establish the Profile of the Ideal Candidate

This is a simple process that allows the people who know most about the job you are hiring to full to identify the kind of person you want to hire. There is a tendency to hire for hard skills and fire for lack of soft skills and this approach focuses on finding the right soft skills up front.

It starts by going over the key attributes of the job with your team, and then each of them goes online to complete an instrument that asks a number of questions designed to identify:

1. Behaviors
2. Values
3. Core attributes

Once these individual reports have been reviewed to ensure there are no wide disparities, they are merged to create a report that identifies exactly the kind of person that you are looking to hire.

The report also has a number of interview questions that you can ask to help focus on whether you are looking at the right people.

2. Develop a Pool of Qualified Candidates

One of the biggest problems in hiring is that companies do not generate sufficient candidate flow. What this means is that they are forced to choose from two small a pool and simply hire the best of what is available – in effect hiring the tallest pygmy.

This lack of candidate flow arises partly because they are worried about being submerged beneath too many resumes to be able to sift through effectively, but this can be fairly easily overcome.

We have identified an online staffing agency that provides a service that works as follows:

• They use the benchmark to create an advert that runs in whatever media (newspaper, bulletin board) seems most appropriate.
• People responding to the advert wherever it runs are directed to a webpage that:
  1. Tells them about the job and the company in a way that gives you a chance to stand out from your competitors and attract more serious candidates.
  2. Organizes the data for all respondents in a searchable database that allows you to look only at those you meet your criteria.
  3. Ask key questions that allow you to screen out people whose requirements do not fit the job and measure their writing skills.
  4. Winnows out the people who aren’t serious enough about your job to take the time to fill out a questionnaire.

You may end up with fewer respondents, but the chances are that they will be much better qualified.

3. Grade the Candidates

One of the most intimidating things about hiring is having to screen and interview candidates and send out rejection letters. While the hiring process described here does not require that you have somebody else screen the applicants for you it is something that you might want to consider.

Having a professional organization screen candidates for you has the following benefits:

1. Eliminates administrative time to set up the interview
2. Cuts down on executive time spent interviewing
3. Minimizes disruption to the office
4. Increased secrecy

Let’s say that the opportunity cost of your time is $250 per candidate. What would it be worth to have somebody else screen?

4. Evaluate the Match