For small businesses without a dedicated HR team, the hiring process can be a challenge. When different departments lead the candidate search, it can introduce inconsistencies. That’s where structured hiring can help. Read on to learn how to implement structured hiring practices into your small business.
What is Structured Hiring?
Structured hiring approaches the recruitment process from a more empirical perspective. Rather than relying on hiring managers’ personal judgment, structured hiring seeks to eliminate potential bias by applying the same consistent methods and criteria to each candidate. This data-driven approach allows for objective scoring and identifies the candidate who performed best in the interviews. It’s a strategy that aims to take some of the guesswork and time-consuming labor out of hiring.Â
Reasons to Implement Structured Hiring
Explore some compelling reasons to implement a more structured hiring process.
- Failed recruiting is expensive: SHRM estimates that it costs an average of $4,700 to make a new hire. When you factor in onboarding costs, hiring may cost as much as 30 per cent of an employee’s salary, a total that’s tough to lose if a new employee doesn’t work out.
- Bad hires weaken morale: Aside from the actual costs, there is an opportunity cost to a bad hire. Teams that were expecting relief from extra tasks now experience both the highs and the lows as they restructure again. Hiring teams can feel demoralized and experience conflicts when a preferred candidate doesn’t work out.
- Structured hiring reduces inconsistency. Most small businesses start out with an unstructured hiring approach. As your company grows and more people are involved in hiring, variable approaches introduce inconsistency and poor organization. Pull the best parts from individual approaches and present a united hiring front.Â
- Improved recruiting increases speed. When candidates are all given the same set of interview questions in the same order, you can eliminate some of the behind-the-scenes coordination and negotiation. Hiring meetings can follow a strict agenda that focuses on data rather than personal opinions. This can streamline your process and reduce time to hire.
- Structured efforts boost transparency. Data-driven hiring provides a defense for your practices, which can be useful in the face of accusations of discrimination or bias. It’s also useful for candidates you don’t hire who ask for feedback. You can provide concrete answers to help them in further job pursuits.Â
Structured Hiring Basics
To implement structured hiring for your small business, consider some of the following strategies:
Standardized job requirements
Determining job requirements is a two-step process where you identify the skills, attributes, and qualities required for the job posting. Then, write a detailed job description that includes a specific list of skills, competencies, education, and experience, so applicants are prepared to discuss how they meet those requirements in the next steps of the hiring process.
Consistent interview questions
Next, you’ll create a set of interview questions you’ll ask each candidate in the same order. The questions should be designed to assess the candidate’s fit with the skills and experience outlined in the job description. The answers to the questions will be scored according to a rubric that evaluates each candidate’s fit within your company culture, the job requirements, and general industry knowledge.
Assessment scenarios
Depending on the type of your business, you may want to place candidates in a role-playing scenario, ask for a writing sample, or have them complete an evaluation test that provides additional data.
Scorecards
Ensure that the question process is designed to be consistent and comparable, with a system that allows each candidate to start from the same place and be scored according to measurable data.
Implement Structured Hiring with ApplicantStack
If starting a structured hiring system seems challenging for your staff, partner with an applicant tracking system like ApplicantStack to serve as a virtual HR department. With a streamlined workflow that helps you revise and post job descriptions, draft interview questions, and keep track of each candidate’s place in the process, you can spend your energy on creating a structured hiring rubric for a fair and measurable approach to each candidate. You can feel confident your new hires demonstrated the qualities needed to succeed in your business. Â
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