When we think of hiring top talent, we expect the burden of recruiting and selecting to fall on human resources, often forgetting that one great—or one bad—hire can create a ripple effect throughout an entire organization. While human resources plays an integral role in talent optimization in any organization, by empowering hiring managers with people analytics and a standard methodical interview process, hiring top talent and building high-performing teams becomes the standard outcome.
We know that behavioral drives and cognitive ability are key indicators of employee success. Aligning hiring managers on job skill requirements, cognitive demand, and the behaviors required for success in the role is the first step in empowering the hiring team to make the right hiring decision. Objective data levels the playing field: When we can agree on what the job demands, we can prioritize the candidates we interview based on fit, not bias. This sets the hiring team up for success before they even enter the room to interview candidates. But what are hiring managers to do when it comes to the interview stage?
Assembling the right hiring team is crucial to landing an exceptional hire; but perhaps even more important is assigning the right role to the right interviewer at the right time. At PI, our standard practice is to take the candidates we’ve identified has high probability job fits through what we call “Super Days.” Super Day candidates will have already spoken to an HR team member and a hiring manager. Those who’ve been identified for final-round interviews will come to our office and spend a few hours meeting and interviewing with key members of the designated team and organization.
To gather the most reliable and holistic information, hiring managers will create an interview strategy map and assign topics to each interviewer. Depending on the role, the interview topics will vary. However, we have a few standardized topics for all Super Days:
- Behavioral interviewing
- Skills testing (by way of case studies, take-home assignments, or proctored technical assessments)
- Team, department, and/or organization dynamics
- Cultural fit
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This strategy mapping not only eliminates the risk of redundancy, but also creates an exceptional experience for candidates. They meet with the right interviewers for the right topics and are able to ask targeted questions to determine on their end if this is the right opportunity for them, too. Landing top talent has to be a mutual agreement. Empowered hiring managers know that the combination of objective candidate data and interview experience (for both the hiring team and the candidates) will make those hiring decisions no-brainers.
Building a high-performing team can take time and comes with its own challenges. Once an organization is at the hire stage in its talent optimization journey, it’s imperative that hiring managers are empowered to make the right hiring decisions. Without the right talent in the right roles, the immediate and downstream effects can be costly. Taking the time to standardize an exceptional hiring process helps to eliminate that risk, bringing the organization to the next level. And, really, what could be a better start than empowering your hiring managers to build high-performing teams?
