4 Ideas to Improve Employee Selection Systems During COVID

This is Part 2 of a series of posts I will have on COVID and the work place. Look out for other posts on the topic and check out previous posts here: Career Development During COVID.

Recent jobs numbers at the time of this posting have suggested that the job market is difficult right now (January’s Jobs Report). Right now, more people are unemployed and fewer companies are hiring. That means that any job posting that is out there inevitably has more candidates for job postings and may even have much more qualified applicants for the job. Combined with the inauguration of a new presidential administration, there is a lot of talk these days about selecting new employee or the lack thereof.

If you’re either hiring now or are looking to a hiring strategy in the next year, you may be a bit overwhelmed with how to handle the potential number of resumes you will see. How can you ensure that you evaluate everyone fairly in your employee selection system? I have tips for consideration in your own selection process. It all comes down to careful planning focused on identifying which applicants can contribute the most to your organization.

Know What You Want

One of the biggest mistakes people make in employee selection is to rush the process and skip a clear defining of expectations for the person who fills the position. When you are looking to hire someone, try to spell out what kind of experience, knowledge, skills, abilities, and personality you want the person to have. Be able to communicate clearly about what is expected of the person for the position down to the type of tasks you envision and the culture of your organization. The more clearly you have this defined, the better that you will be able to search for candidates that have those characteristics from the resume stage to selection. It will also play an important role when you go to develop your employees and understand if people are performing well on the job.

Evaluate Each of The Key Characteristics

Once you have key characteristics identified, you need the capability to evaluate them. This might be something simple that you can find on a resume, a more complex characteristic that is best evaluated through scientific tools, or something you can evaluate through a traditional structured interview.

Whatever methods you choose to compare applicants, it is best to provide yourself a numerical rating on how well the applicant demonstrated each of the job skills and/or competencies you want to see. As you complete those ratings, you will have the ability to get an overall applicant average and compare the specific skill or competency for those whose overall scores are close. This can be especially helpful when you have a lot of people you may want to consider.

The extra time that it takes to develop these ratings are well worth the value add. Those ratings bring clarity in decision making and legal defensibility (if the scales are built well).

Use Organizational Strategy to Inform Employee Selection

The strategy of your organization should be reflected in the characteristics you want to see in your employees. The direction of your products and services should help determine the what kind of position you have, what you want the person to do, and on a broad level how people accomplish their work. The philosophy of what you hope to do and be as an organization should come through as you describe the job and organization with the applicants. Incorporating your organizational strategy will make it easier for applicants to know what they are getting into.

Establish Processes Now

The worst thing you could do is be unprepared for how to proceed with your decisions. It could leave you legally vulnerable and hiring poorly performing employees. Ensure that you know what each hurdle is in your selection process, how each of those hurdles is going to inform your selection decision, and what the touch points with the candidates will be like. This involves some big categories of decisions.

1. Determine which of the key characteristics you want to evaluate and how.
2. Establish how you will decide who moves on from each stage (e.g., resume to interview, interview to other evaluation steps, etc.)
3. Establish the role of ratings in your selection process

It is very easy to get bogged down in decision making and all the relevant pieces of information. Knowing how the important characteristics align with a process of decisions can help frame your objectives and focus your efforts on the most essential elements at each step. You should be able to do these steps over the phone or through video chat apps to help with COVID guidelines, but be sure to think about how adjustments you will need to make both logistically and to ensure accuracy of ratings.

Final Thoughts

The challenges for individuals and organizations are going to be numerous during and following this pandemic. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t solutions. Whether you are hiring now or getting ready to hire later this year, these tips should position you well to sift through possible increases in applicants in your employee selection process.

As always, thanks for reading.

–Brandon
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