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Getting Your Team Involved in the Hiring Process

Getting Your Team Involved in the Hiring Process

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Right now, the department I work for is hiring an assistant executive director. Since I am new, and this is my first job in (let’s call it) the real world, this is the first time I’ve ever seen a hiring process first-hand. Before going through the process, I assumed there would be a few interviews and then our executive director would make the final decision. I was wrong. There is a selection committee made up of about five people, and this committee is the entity that makes the decision together. Not only is there a selection committee, there are also open sessions that all employees of the department are invited to attend. At the end of the week, employees who attended the open session–from administrative assistants to managers–are encouraged to give input to the committee members on who they think should be hired and why. It’s a total collaborative effort, and it works.

Going through the process got me thinking about how it’s probably a really good idea to involve all members of a team when making a big hiring decision, so I looked on the internet for information to back that up. This morning, I found an article on ERE Recruiting’s website titled “The Big Benefits Your Organization Gets from Collaborative Hiring,” by John Sullivan.

Sullivan writes that while managers have owned the hiring process for hundreds of years, more companies, such as Google, Facebook and Apple, and  are moving away from the top-down decision-making and more towards a collective effort known as collaborative hiring or team-based hiring, which involves most members of the team in the hiring process.

“Because hiring is a major decision, there is no logical reason to exclude it from collaborative decision-making,” he writes. “By adding collaborative hiring, you get a higher level of employee involvement, stronger employee buy-in, and more diverse assessment and candidate selling approaches.”

Because managers might not want to relinquish their hiring power until benefits are proven, Sullivan outlined the top ten benefits to collaborative hiring, which he broke down into three categories: improved hiring results, improved productivity and retention benefits.

Improved hiring results:

  1. Showing off team members is a key selling point – makes coworkers highly visible so applicants know who to expect to work with if hired
  2. Your employees may be the most effective salespeople – allows employees to tell candidates what they love about their job
  3. Fewer disgruntled new hires – candidates are allowed a realistic preview of what the working environment would be like
  4. Diverse opinions reduce major hiring errors – employees can give a diverse assessment of the same candidate and bring up points not seen by all
  5. Employee involvement may improve referrals – reminds employees that their opinion and work is valued, therefore making them likely to recommend the company to friends and collegues
  6. An external competitive advantage – information of a collaborative hiring procedure helps will build your external brand image, and thus improves future recruiting

Improved productivity:

  1. The new hire will get up to speed more rapidly – being in on the selection process makes employees feel comfortable with the new hire and more likely to help get he or she assimilated
  2.  Interviewing increases employee learning – employees can learn about best practices used at other businesses and might get ideas of things to implement into day-to-day procedures

Retention benefits:

  1. Involvement in hiring may increase employee retention – employees will learn more about policies and procedures of their workplace though selling it to the candidates, which can remind them why they want to stay
  2. Reinforcing your culture of collaboration may further increase retention – collaborative hiring will reenforce the employees’ feeling of community within their workplace and remind them that their employer values their thoughts and opinions

Sullivan goes on to write that collaborative hiring is not without its issues, as is with any business practice. Confidentiality might be an issue if everyone is in on the details of hiring. Employee production could dwindle because of the effort directed to the hiring process. Teammates might feel threatened by the candidates and recommend to under-hire. The employees might not be trained in hiring and know what to look for. Recommendations from employees might not be taken into consideration in the decision, which could lead to bad feelings toward management. It could take more time than a normal hiring process and cause a company to miss out on top candidates.

But even with the negative aspects, Sullivan still stands firm that collaborative hiring is the way to go.

“Even though I have identified several major drawbacks associated with collaborative hiring, if you develop effective methods for speeding up the time it takes to complete the involvement process and thoroughly training your employees in the hiring process, you will find as others have, that the benefits of collaborative hiring far outweigh any risks.”

 

 

Katie Devereaux
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