A Well Defined Hiring and Selection Process Will Pay Off Long-Term
How do you determine who you hire? What areas do you prioritize during your selection process? How can you ensure you are getting the best fit for the role you are trying to fill? All of those answers can come from having a well-defined talent selection process. Now maybe one of the most critical hiring periods for retail in a long time. There is a lot of shifting around occurring. Recent furloughs and an ever-changing business climate have opened doors for potential candidates, unlike anything we’ve ever seen. The best talent will be looking for new opportunities, chances to grow, as well as stability they can rely on in the coming years. Having a plan for making your selection process consistent, efficient, and effective will be necessary to take full advantage of the opportunities currently existing.
Define your interview process
Having a clear and well-thought-out process for selecting people is essential to ensuring you get a good read on your candidates, but that you can also compare over time what is working and what is now for selection. Define who will be a part of your selection team. You may use different people for different types of candidates, but there is a need for the same pool of people to be involved, so there can be consistency in how you evaluate and compare candidates. Plan out what they will discuss and which areas of a candidate’s background they will explore. The should be some flexibility to expand beyond specific areas. Still, you will want to ensure between all of the interviews that you have a full view of the candidate’s background and examples of how they have lead throughout their career. And finally, share the decision-making process. Keep your method concise, but specific to your needs. Include those who are necessary, not just the traditional players from the leadership team.
A cultural fit is critical
The person may have all of the skills you need and all of the experience you want, but if they do not match the culture you have in your business, those talents will be wasted. Worse, it may disrupt your business longer-term.
As a District Manager and Regional Vice President, I always had a peer group interview potential new hires. I wanted to ensure that the candidate had a chance to speak with people who worked for me and could share their perspectives on the business and how our environment worked. It was also important for me to hear how others would see the candidate as fitting into our team and culture. In many ways, those interviews and the feedback from other Store Managers or District Managers carried the most weight. If they felt the prospective employee would not be a good fit, we almost always moved on to a different candidate. Culture is critically important. Someone who will not fit in can cause long-standing harm for the team and will be a poor experience for the new hire—both of which you want to avoid.
What is the role you are really filling?
In addition to filling a need for specific experience levels or skills that match a job description, you need to identify if there is a larger role that needs to be filled in the position. Are you looking for someone that can immediately play a role in helping to lead the team from a different perspective? Are you looking for someone that can provide new ideas, experiences, or new thinking to your business? Even for everyday roles such as stocking merchandise, having a fresh perspective from a very different business can help in innovating processes for your location. If you have a long-tenured team, having someone from the outside on occasion can infuse new energy and ideas into your situation. Managed properly during your interview process can ensure that culturally this will be welcomed as well.
There is more to interviewing and selection than just asking questions. One of the most significant mindset shifts to consider as you progress in your career is the idea of filling a job. Filling leadership roles is a more prominent reflection of your skills as a leader than some of the daily tasks you complete. Having a well-rounded group of leaders around you that can take on additional assignments, continue to grow to new levels, and ultimately become a backfill candidate for you are all reasons to have a well defined and rigorous interview and selection process.
How do you use your interview and selection process to continually upgrade your talent?
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