Selecting a candidate who can hit the ground running and make a meaningful contribution is difficult enough, even with the best in-person onboarding and mentoring programs. Remote work while coping with a global crisis only makes finding the right person even more challenging.
Wondering how to hire the right employee and avoid costly hiring mistakes during challenging times? Here are some strategies you can employ during each stage of the hiring process when you’re seeking to hire the right person.
Take a closer look at resumes
Hiring managers always face the temptation to hire the candidate who interviews well, rather than the one with a more substantive resume. In times of crisis, focusing on the resume first is critical to hiring someone who can cope with the challenges that lie ahead.
Look for candidates whose resume demonstrates a ‘yes’ answer to the following three questions.
Is their experience directly relevant?
During a crisis period (and especially with remote work), your usual onboarding and mentoring programs are likely scaled back or non-existent, making it more challenging to bring a new hire up to speed.
Without these programs, it becomes even more critical that the candidate has prior experience doing the job so they can get started and be successful even with little formal guidance.
Have they successfully transitioned to other roles in the past?
In a time of crisis, the role you hire someone for today may look completely different in six months. Does their resume show signs that the candidate has successfully pivoted to new tasks and roles in the past? Candidates who have successfully transitioned through other roles in the past may be more resilient when faced with new challenges in the future.
Does their resume show growth over time?
Similar to how it’s important for a candidate to be able to transition, they also need to show signs that they’re capable of growing into larger and more complex responsibilities. A candidate who has hopped from one role to only similar other roles over the course of their career may struggle with larger, more complicated tasks that can come in a time of crisis. Look for candidates whose successive roles each demonstrate building on responsibility from the previous ones.
Revisit the interview process
One key for how to hire the right person in a time of crisis is to address the interview process itself. Whether you do
phone interviews, onsite interviews, or panel interviews, chances are your process will need a revamp in the age of remote work. In particular, you’ll want a format that works well with phone and video interviews.
Consider using the following common interview process to collect different perspectives on candidates’ qualifications, while also minimizing interviewer bias:
- Select a panel of interviewers to each conduct separate interviews. Each interviewer should bring a unique perspective to the table. Select at least three interviewers, including a potential coworker, their potential manager, and someone from a completely different department who can provide an outside perspective.
- Decide the objectives for each interviewer ahead of time. For example, the future coworker might ask questions about the candidate’s ability to perform the day-to-day job, while the interviewer from a different department might ask questions to assess how well the candidate will fit in with the company culture.
- Include questions in your interviews that focus on the candidate’s ability to work independently and figure out new and sometimes ambiguous tasks. A direct behavioral interview question can work well. For example, ‘Tell me about a time when you’ve had to get started on a difficult project with little guidance.’
- After the interview and before discussing the candidate, each interviewer should write down their impressions as well as their recommendation for ‘hire’ or ‘don’t hire.’ Writing down everyone’s impressions ahead of time will help you avoid unintentionally overlooking certain interview feedback.
- When discussing the candidate, focus on the facts. For example, instead of just ‘He’s a real go-getter’, try ‘In my interview, he gave this example of taking initiative in his previous job, which suggested to me he would be a real go-getter.’
There are many effective ways to conduct interviews, but the steps above lend themselves particularly well to remote work situations where one-on-one video conference interviews work best.
Raise your hiring bar
As you complete interviews and consider candidates, keep in mind that working in a time of crisis can be more difficult and require more qualified candidates. Someone skilled enough to be hired last year may not be up to this year’s challenges.
Use this crisis as an excuse to ‘raise the bar’ in your hiring. Resist the urge to hire a mediocre candidate just to fill a seat instead of hiring the right employee for the job. Better to struggle without a key hire for a few months than to fill the position quickly with someone who will struggle with the job long-term. Keep looking if you need to, and trust that the right person will come along.
Allow growth to come out of a crisis
Strong hiring skills are critical in a time of crisis, but they also have positive ramifications that last long after a new normal sets in. Being more thoughtful in your hiring today will gradually, with each new hire, strengthen your team and improve your work environment far into the future.
