Paullin’s 12-Step No Sweat Hiring System

An Excerpt from: Hire Hotdogs Fire Baloney by Don Paullin

Hiring Can Be Easy Or:
Hiring can become a nightmare for managers without an effective and understandable selection system. It is also hazardous to a company’s health to not have a legally compliant selection system. Remember, under U.S. law all candidates must be treated equally. As a general rule, you cannot ask one candidate to be judged for hiring with one set of standards, and ask another candidate to be hired by a different set of standards.
Without an effective and understandable selection system a company’s managers will waste time reinventing the selection pro-cess. This ends-up with a poor interviewing process, possible selection of inferior employees, and potentially illegal hiring decisions.

Outcomes of a Poor Selection System:

  • Incomplete data for decision making
  • Illegal questions and potential lawsuits
  • Enormous time wasting
  • Out walks good candidates
  • Everybody feels bad
  • Bad impression of you and the company

IT Can Be Easy and Rewarding
An effective, understandable and compliant selection system will bring high dividends in the payoff of great people and profits. Here is Paullin’s 12-Step No Sweat Hiring System. It is introduced here and the chapters that follow elaborate on each step.

Paullin’s Point—If you don’t invest the time to do it correctly today, you will spend more time and money in repairing mistakes tomorrow.


Paullin’s 12-Step No Sweat Hiring System

Step 1…Writing the Job Description
Decide What You Need to Hire. A fundamental mistake that managers make in hiring is right at the beginning of the selection process by not having a clear documented description of what the job is all about. Without the job description the manager cannot design a proper advertisement, provide the search firms job and candidate specifications, give information to candidates, or even write proper interviewing questions.
The job description is your guide in writing your advertisement, designing your interview questions, communicating to candidates, and evaluating candidates. It is the essential guiding light for search firms. The job description is a must for proper legal defense! It is the essential tool to give to search firms and managers involved in the hiring process.

A job description captures the scope and purpose of the job. Its format customarily consists of: the job title; a general summary; principal duties and responsibilities; and the knowledge, skills and abilities required to perform the job.

The job description is an essential part of my hiring system. All hiring decisions are based on tools and questions derived from the properly written job description. In Chapter 11 I’ve provided a job description example which will help you learn to accurately write up-to-date descriptions for the jobs you are recruiting.

Step 2…Job Predictors
Job Predictors are job performance traits that predict expected, specific job performance. The Predictors that you select are those that are most important to the job. They are the necessary traits of job performance on which a conclusion for making the best hire can be based. These are best determined from the job description as well as from employees who have held the position or managed the position. Based on my experience, I have defined and listed more than 30 Job Predictors most often used in my hiring system. You may define your own Predictors that are key to your positions. The Predictors are your keys to hiring the best and link the job description to the hiring tools presented in this book. Job Predictors are discussed in Chapters 15, 16 and 17.

Step 3…Recruiting

Paullin’s Point—If there are only minnows in the pond, you can’t catch a trophy fish regardless of the bait.

When it comes to hiring the best, the same logic applies. You must develop an applicant pool that has the depth to provide a choice of quality candidates. Your applicant pool can come from a number of sources both external and internal to your company.

External advertising, through commercial, professional, government, and school alumni job posting and web-based sites, can be used. Employment agencies and executive search firms may provide good value and increase your pool.

Employee referrals are highly regarded and have traditionally proven to be a reliable source of quality candidates. In tight labor markets, incentives can be paid to employees for successful referrals. Often, part of the incentive is paid when the candidate comes on board and the remainder is paid after they have been employed beyond a certain length of time.

Candidates can apply directly to companies via their job opportunity boards found on the company web sites. Another inexpensive source of high quality talent comes by way of outplacement firms and via the many networking groups for people in job transition. These exist in communities throughout the country.
Networking itself can be effective by letting the people you do business with, and the people you’ve dealt with in the past, know about your job opening.

A company’s internal job posting or job opportunity system taps the internal candidate pool. The internal job opportunity system is often the cornerstone of a company’s promotion from within philosophy and a key part of a company’s culture.

There are a number of ways to develop a high quality candidate pool, and this pool is the only way you will be able to hire the best. See Chapters 12, 13 and 14.

Step 4…Resume Screening
Screaming or Screening! Wasting time is killing success. Proper resume screening is a great time saver and prevents the urge to scream when you are handed a pile of 500 resumes. The skill here is to know how to properly read a resume while keeping in mind that a resume is like a movie trailer which only shows the good scenes. So in addition to determining whether the candidate meets your job requirements and specifications, you need to be able to evaluate the resume on both what it does and does not say. By skillfully screening resumes you can determine those who you really want to TeleScreen. Chapter 19 shows how.

Step 5…TeleScreening
Phone It In! After the resume screen, proper telephone or TeleScreening will save time and frustration. You will learn how to write your TeleScreen with job related questions using a preformatted TeleScreen guide. This ensures defensible decisions because you consistently ask the same questions. Your TeleScreen includes a closing statement which also helps ensure legal compliance and defensibility. Most importantly, your TeleScreen allows you to knock out candidates and prioritize the good ones that you will invite in for face-to-face interviews.
Your TeleScreen can be written and used as a 10-minute phone screen. This will save you hours of time and acid-producing frustration in writing phone screens for every candidate. This is thoroughly described in Chapter 20 and an example TeleScreen form is shown in Chapter 30.

Step 6…The Predictor Interview Guide
Being Prepared Puts Your Best Foot Forward. You are the primary impression the interviewee has of the company so you must look organized and prepared. The Predictor Interview Guide is the most valuable tool in selecting the best candidate, staying legally compliant, and giving the candidate the most positive impression of you, management, and the company.

From your TeleScreens you have decided on whom to interview. You are now ready to write your Predictor Interview Guide. As with the TeleScreen, you write the Predictor Interview Guide with job-related questions. You do this by using the job description as your platform. Use the candidate’s resume and background to make the interview questions candidate specific.

Predictor Interview Guides are explained in Chapter 18 and an example Predictor Interview Guide is shown in Chapter 30.

Step 7…The Initial Interview
You are the hiring manager, and you now invite the candidates in for their first round interviews. I recommend you conduct this first round by yourself. This way you are determining those who will be invited back for second round interviews with your colleagues.

An important interview skill is controlling the interview. This does not mean having a Theory X domineering style in the interview. It means asking only the proper questions and listening to answers. It means if the candidate is generalizing, you bring him or her back to specifics and more succinct answers. Along with being armed with questions based on Predictors, this allows you to maintain your focus on the candidate’s past job related experiences and keep the candidate focused on answering your interview questions. By doing this you can obtain the data you need to make a good hiring decision.

In Chapters 21, 22 and 23 you will learn how to separate the well qualified candidate from the smooth talking con and people who wander or ramble through their answers. You will also learn the 75% rule of listening, a very powerful and too often forgotten interviewing tool that causes the candidate to share even more information. You will see how the effective use of open-ended and follow-up questions to probe and obtain information gives you even more decision making information. You will also see how to professionally end the interview in a way that helps ensure legal compliance and defensibility of your selection decision.

Step 8…Reference Checking as a Company Policy
The Insurance Policy that Pays Before You Crash. You wouldn’t think of driving without an insurance policy so don’t hire without a New Hire Insurance Policy. You may have heard that nobody will give references—wrong! Reference checks are obtainable and essential. Reference checks are your insurance policy that will help prevent costly mistakes in turnover and problems.

Many consultants place this later in the selection sequence. I prefer that it be done before team interviewing and think of it as the Validator vs. Terminator. Reference checks should provide validation of the candidate or may provide termination of further consideration.

In Chapter 24 you will learn the proper way to obtain references from your candidates and the proper way to successfully conduct them. Most importantly you will understand the value of reference checks. A TeleReference example is shown in Chapter 30.

Step 9…Team Interviewing
Three heads are better than one. Team interviewing with 3 managers is essential when interviewing for managerial positions and often is a good idea for professional positions. This means 3 managers (2 others and yourself) interview the candidate individually. Each interviewer is armed with Predictor questions written up in their Predictor Interview Guides. Each interviewer then confirms and validates past job performance which will predict success in the open position. Job offers are critical decisions and the team process works better for “go/no-go” decisions. For lower level positions, where a person only completes an application and does not have a resume, you may need just one person interviewing.

Paullin’s Point—If the job requires a resume, then have three people individually interview the candidate. If it only requires an application one or two people may be sufficient.

In Chapter 25 you will see how the assessments of more than one interviewer helps provide reliability and validity to the selection decision through the team interviewing process.

Step 10…Team Data Sharing and Decision Time
Avoid the Gunfight at Ego Corral. Avoid fist fights and fast draw contests by checking all the egos and guns at the door through the structured team data sharing process. If the head boss interviews I recommend it be understood that the “boss hat” comes off during the data sharing meeting.

Each Interviewer’s Predictor scores from each candidate’s Predictor Interview Guide go into the Predictor Score Card. This provides the basis for the interviewers to discuss the scores on each Predictor and at the conclusion of the discussion reach a final score for the candidate on that specific Predictor.
Team data sharing is detailed in Chapter 25 as well as an example of a completed Predictor Score Card.

Step 11…Job Offer
You Win! Having followed the Twelve Step No Sweat Hiring System, by the time you make the job offer, everything you have done should give you a certain comfort that your offer will be accepted. This becomes not only a time of anticipation but an occasion for joyous celebration. Let the candidate know they beat a lot of people and were selected as best for the job.

This step is no less important than any other. Remember, the candidate is still evaluating you and may be weighing your offer against others. Make sure you handle this step with class and confidence because you are representing yourself and your company. You don’t want to let the “Big One” get away.
Chapter 27 on closing the deal gives you the fine points to help you ensure success.

Step 12…On-Boarding
Victory Flag and Trophy. Your new hire now has accepted your offer and is coming on board. This is your victory, and you want to make your new employee feel he or she is the trophy. It is here you acquaint and accessorize your new employee. Make sure the orientation exceeds what you would expect for yourself. Make sure your new hire has all the tools, equipment, and work space required to begin contributing immediately and to feel really good about being here.

Memorialize! This is your opportunity to introduce and make your new employee part of the company’s culture. In doing this, you are reselling them on the company and their future.

On-boarding in a first class way is an essential ingredient for the employee’s retention and success. Chapter 28 gives you many ideas on how to make on-boarding a first class experience and make your new hire feel they are a real member of the organization.

Beyond the 12 Steps
Call Your Attorney before the Doctor! A medical physical may be appropriate after the job offer. Passing the physical then may be documented as a condition of employment. Drug testing and the medical physical should be in written guidelines, and by all means, reviewed and approved by your attorney.

Letters of Rejection. My rejection letters are letters of Appreciation but Still Searching, or A.S.S. letters. These letters can be sent out at different stages in the system or at the end. You’ll see my philosophy on letters of rejection with an example in Chapter 26.

You don’t need a Humvee to go to Starbucks. You may wish to modify your selection system depending on the skill and salary level of the position. It is your system; redesign it as needed to fit your particular needs. You don’t need a Humvee to go to Starbucks. You should not use the same resources for a $25,000 a year position that you would for a $100,000 a year position.

I believe the remainder of this book will give you the knowledge, ideas, and tools to hire the best. I also believe, that as I discovered, you will discover too that great managers begin with great hires.

National speakers Association

© Copyright 2005-2006. Hiring Firing Experts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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