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HR INSIGHTS, RECRUITING AND STAFFING
Hiring Wisdom: How to Develop Some Great Interview Questions
by Mel Kleiman

This exercise was adapted from an ice breaker published on the Dr. Clue website.

Materials & Set Up: A classroom with seats and/or tables.

Process: Pose this question to the group:

“If you could ask just one question to discover a person’s suitability for <job title/position>, what would your question be?”

Issue one situation for the whole group or allocate a different job/position to each team member or pair/team to work on.

Ask people to work individually or in small teams to devise their questions. Then have people work in paris or threes to test, reflect on, refine, and role play the questions.

Give a time limit for question preparation and a separate time limit for testing/role playing.

Debrief:

Are there advantages in preparing questions in advance, rather than relying on instinct or invention at the time?
What else happens while we ask questions, aside from the words between us? (Explore body language and non-verbal communications.)
What sort of questions are least effective and should be avoided? (Try to identify characteristics of ineffective questions.)
What sort of questions are most effective? (Try to identify characteristics of effective questions.)
How do we feel when being asked effective/ineffective questions?
To what extent and how should questions be tailored for the particular listener and for the questioner’s needs?
What crucial questions do we ask (at work/in life) which we could prepare more carefully?
The Point: There are no absolute “right” or best questions. There are, however, many effective questions, depending on the situation and people’s needs. Likewise, there are certainly questions which do not work well and which should be avoided.

Questioning is powerful and helpful when prepared well, but wastes everyone’s time and creates problems when it is not.

This was originally published on Mel Kleiman’s Humetrics blog.

Mel Kleiman, CSP, is an internationally-known authority on recruiting, selecting, and hiring hourly employees. He has been the president of Humetrics since 1976 and has over 30 years of practical experience, research, consulting and professional speaking work to his credit. Contact him at mkleiman@humetrics.com.

SEPTEMBER 2, 2011 BY MEL KLEIMAN LEAVE A COMMENT
If you want to hire and retain great people, give them a view of what the future could be. Create an org chart showing all of the opportunity you envision for your present workforce over the next few years. Show them the opportunities that exist and help them buy into your goals and dreams.
If you’re using The 5 Firsts: A Simple System to On-board and Retain Top Talent, this would be a great tool to add to the end-of-the-first-month-on-the-job discussion.


(Do your hiring forms really help you screen in the best and screen out the rest? To preview the efficient and effective employment application, structured interview, and interview rating forms Humetrics has perfected over the past 20 years, click here.)

1. Don’t have dumb rules.
2. Don’t have too many rules.
3. If the rules get in the way of doing business, get rid of them or change them.
4. Don’t make your people break any rules to satisfy a customer.
5. If you aren’t going to enforce it, forget it.

Remember, you don’t have to treat people equally, but you do need to treat them fairly.
Review all rules once a year and see if you still need them or if you need new ones.
Here is the old policy Nordstrom used to have. It was short enough to tweet and comprised the entire “policy manual:”

Welcome to Nordstrom

We’re glad to have you with our Company. Our number one goal is to provide outstanding customer service. Set both your personal and professional goals high. We have great confidence in your ability to achieve them.

Nordstrom Rules

Rule #1: Use your best judgment in all situations.

There will be no additional rules.

Please feel free to ask your department manager, store manager, or division general manager any question at any time.

This was originally published on Mel Kleiman’s Humetrics blog.

Mel Kleiman, CSP, is an internationally-known authority on recruiting, selecting, and hiring hourly employees. He has been the president of Humetrics since 1976 and has over 30 years of practical experience, research, consulting and professional speaking work to his credit. Contact him at mkleiman@humetrics.com.

Helping you build a frontline that builds your bottom line.


MEDIOCRITY WILL KILL YOU
Because I have worked closely with all kinds of clients in all kinds of industries, I have been able to pinpoint a widespread stumbling block that keeps too many organizations from being their best. It is the practice of tolerating mediocre performers.

Let’s face it, it’s not the dishonest or disrespectful or undependable people who keep us from excelling. Most of us are smart enough to cut our losses and fire these losers fast.

No, most often the cause of less than peak performance is the mediocre players who keep us from having exceptional, winning teams that outperform the competition.
The main reasons mediocrity is allowed to flourish are because:

1. Most of us are just too nice. We don’t want to be responsible for hurting anyone’s feelings or putting them in dire financial straights. We avoid short-term pain and end up tolerating long-term misery.

2. “I just don’t have time right now to hire and train a new employee.” (This is another way of saying your team doesn’t have any bench strength. In other words, the convenience of mediocrity trumps the inconvenience of change.)

3. “We will have to pay unemployment.” (No one stops to think about the long-term cost of substandard performance versus the limited-time payment of benefits. One way or another, you’re going to pay and the right decision is in favor of the overall quality of your organization.)

There are some simple solutions to these problems, but, like most things worth doing, they aren’t necessarily easy.

1. Recruit and interview religiously: Make sure you are looking for new hires even when you don’t need anyone at the moment.

2. Then, when you are not in desperation hiring mode, you can raise the bar: When you don’t have to hire the first minimally qualified person who shows up, kick your hiring standards up a notch and don’t settle for less.

3. Hold everyone accountable, including yourself: Spell out what it takes to be a successful member of your organization and make sure everyone knows exactly what’s expected.

4. Become an employer-of-choice. Is yours a fun place to work? Do you have family-friendly policies? Do all the players on your team enjoy working together? When you can answer “yes” to these questions, you’ll be able to attract top-notch talent at every level.