Tag: Selection

Dear Consultant,

I work in the Operations Department of a company that doesn’t usually have a lot of turn-over.  This week a long time technical staff member left the company and I need to write a job description to back-fill for her position.  I know what she did, but not the technical details.  How should I go about writing a good job description to bring in the right candidate?

Writing a job description can be a very involved process depending on how thorough you would like to be.  There are many ways to go about this, but the following suggestion is based on industry best practices and partly on the work done by Catano, Weisner and Hackett (2013).  The following steps can be used or adapted to your situation to help you write a job description.

Step 1:

Determine the job tasks and competencies Don’t focus immediately on the education and experience related requirements for the position.  A good starting point is to do some research about what tasks and competencies are associated with the position.  That is, what do people in the job do and how should they behave in situations that they are likely to encounter when working in the position? These are some of the pieces of information that are necessary to be able to write a job description:

  1. A list of tasks that an employee will do in this position.
  2. A list of the competencies, or the types of behaviours that you’d like to see the person working in this position exhibit.  These could be things like “build rapport quickly”, “defuse tension in a high conflict situation”, “exhibits leadership in team situations”, etc.

If you don’t already know much about the job, then there are many ways to gather this information, but the most common ways are to work with the subject matter experts (SME) who either currently occupy the position or are in the same department/team.  Some of these methods include:

  1. Interviews with the SMEs.  Schedule some time with someone who knows the role that you’re trying fill, perhaps the hiring manager.  Ideally speak with someone who is in a similar role to the one you’re hiring for.
  2. You can learn about the tasks and the competencies necessary for the job by creating a questionnaire and sending it out to multiple people on the team.  This is less resource intensive for all parties and allows you to aggregate opinions from multiple people in a relatively short time period.
  3. Observation of other people who are doing the job currently.  This is time consuming, but it can be useful in situations when the SMEs don’t have the time or inclination to help.  It can also help to draw out some of the tacit, or unspoken, aspects of the job.

Step 2:

Determine what Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Other Attributes (KSAO) are necessary Once you have collected all of the tasks and competencies that are associated with the job, list the KSAOs necessary to successfully do each task and fulfill all of the competencies.  As an example, if a job task is to “maintain a close relationship with a broad client base”, then the skills necessary to accomplish this could be “knowledge of customer relationship management software” and “good communication skills.”  By actually listing each KSAO, and linking it to a job task or competency, you have a strong and transparent justification for the items listed in your job description.  This is helpful in cases where hiring decisions are disputed internally or in human rights litigation.

Step 3:

Determine the proficiency level of each KSAO How proficient will an applicant need to be in each KSAO for them to be able to successfully do each job task or competency?  You can keep this as simple as “fair”, “good” or “excellent”, or provide a scale of one to ten, or some other way of ranking proficiency.  Once you understand the proficiency necessary for each KSAO you can start to talk with SMEs about what actual requirements such as degrees, professional designations or years of experience in particular roles, etc.

Step 4:

Understand what requirements are “must-haves” and what are “would-be-nice” The perfect candidate isn’t always going to present themselves.  It is important to recognize that and be clear in your mind about which requirements are necessary and which ones are not entirely necessary.  Being explicit about which requirements are absolute “must-haves” in the job description helps potential applicants to self-screen, so that they won’t bother applying if they don’t have the “must-have” requirements.  This saves everyone a lot of time and effort.

Step 5:

Determine how you would like to “sell” the position to outstanding candidates Realize that you’re trying to sell a “product” to a “customer”, that is you’re trying to convince qualified applicants to apply to your job rather than the jobs posted by your competitor.  Get into the head of candidates who would excel in the position that you’re hiring for, and list out a few points that you can include in your job description to attract those outstanding candidates.  These  points could include things like the image your organization, non-monetary compensation (benefits), office location, job title, flexible hours, opportunities for growth, organizational culture, etc.

Step 6:

Write the description Keep it reasonably short, but still descriptive.  The more specificity you provide, the more self-selecting will occur with unsuitable candidates.  Start with information about the organization, then provide information about the team, then finally the position itself.  Explicitly list the “must-have” requirements for the position as well as the “desired” or “would-be-nice” requirements.  It is also helpful to describe the immediacy of when the position needs to be filled.  If there is flexibility in starting, that may encourage good candidates who are currently employed and need some time to end their current obligations.  Remember that frequently the best candidates are already in a job!

I hope this helps you write your job description.

Dear Consultant,

We’ve recently lost someone on our team, and my manager has tasked me with bringing in a new employee who can do the job as well as, or better than the last person.  Any suggestions about how I should do it?

Hiring a new employee is not as easy as it might seem initially.  Remember that there are a lot of things to think about, not only about writing a job description, but also about marketing the job to the right audience is also important attracting a good pool of applicants. Here is a process that you can follow that is partially based on industry best practices as well as information from Catano, Weisner and Hackett (2013).  Depending on your organization, and the position that you’re hiring for you can adapt this as you deem appropriate.  A more in-depth explanation of each step is also linked below.

  1. If you have a Human Resources Department, consult with them to follow your organization’s procedures for hiring a new employee.
  2. Learn about the job that you’re hiring for if you don’t already know a lot about it.  This is sometimes called “job analysis” and it will help you understand what knowledge, skills, abilities and other attributes (KSAOs) are necessary to perform this job well.  A job analysis involves interviews with subject matter experts who know the job well, or even direct observation of people who are doing the job currently.  It also requires that you itemize the tasks will need to be accomplished in the job and the competencies necessary to excel in the position.
  3. Write a “Job Description” that explains what an employee doing this job will be required to do and how they are supposed to do it.  The job description should also include the minimum necessary KSAOs required for the job, and the desired KSAOs.  Usually the minimum and desired KSAO sections are where you specify previous work experience, education, professional designations, motivations, etc.
  4. Come up with a “Recruitment Strategy” that can either be formal or informal.  This strategy should include some thinking around your budget for marketing the position, what mediums you have available to post your job as well as what “selling points” you’re willing to share in your job description.
  5. Develop a “Screening Process” that will help to save you time.  Depending on the number of applicants, you may not be able to interview everyone who applies to the job.  In this case, an initial screening process can help.  Screening can include looking for minimum qualification and cut-off scores for grades or test, years of experience, professional designations, etc.  These minimum qualifications and cut-offs should be carefully thought through, it is at this stage that you can easily disregard a wonderful candidate because they have one year less experience than you’ve specified in your cut-off.
  6. Next you’ll need to “Create a short list of applicants”.  This list will be used to determine who you’d like to spend more time with and interview. As best as you can, try to come up with objective criteria for evaluating each application against the KSAOs that you’ve already defined in your job analysis.  Be transparent about this, because it will offer insight into your decision making in the case of disputes later on.
  7. Once you’ve created your short list of applicants, you’ll want to reach out to them to “Conduct Interviews”.  The main goal of interviews are to fill in the blanks that are not specified on their resumes/CVs and applications.  They are also useful to determine soft skills not easily articulated on applications as well as organizational fit.  Some things you’ll want to keep in mind:
    • Be careful not to think that someone is a good fit for the job just because you like them, or that they are similar to you.
    • To keep things fair, make sure that you have a standard set of interview questions that are asked to each applicant.
    • Conduct the interviews in a similar manner for each applicant.  Similar room, similar questions (ideally, identical), everyone offered refreshments, etc.
    • All interviewers fill out a standard form that evaluates as objectively as possible, all of the KSAOs required for the job.
    • Ask for contact information for two or three references and get the applicant to sign a document giving you permission to contact and ask questions of the people they’ve specified
    • Keep the standard forms that were filled out during and after interviews on file in case of hiring disputes down the road.  You need to have transparency into your decision making at every point in the hiring process.

8.    The next step is to “Do Reference Checks”.  Once you have signed permission to contact references, you can begin setting up times to talk on the phone.  Only check references on applicants whom you’re seriously considering for the position.  Make sure that you follow a similar set of questions for each reference and fill out a standard form based on the answers provided by each reference.

9.    The most important part is the final “Selection Process” in choosing the top two or three candidates, and the order in which you’d like to send out offers.  Even if you don’t have a lot of objective measures in your evaluation process, you can sometime apply a score to each of the KSAOs developed in the job analysis.  This provides a transparent and objective way to rank applicants and provide insight into why one applicant was selected over another.  Avoid “gutt-feel” or “intuition” that is not backed up with further thought and objective justification.  Then send out an offer to your top candidate and await their approval before telling the next candidate that they have not been selected for the position.  If negotiations with the top candidate are not successful, send a letter of offer to your second highest candidate.

I hope that this process helps with your new hire.  Each stage described above can be quite detailed, please click on the links for each stage for further information.

References: http://www.amazon.ca/Recruitment-Selection-Canada-Victor-Catano/dp/0176504370