Categories
Uncategorized

Effective Recruiting

The recruiting process is highly significant in bringing on new team members with a different viewpoint. Through my experiences, I have participated in a couple of interviews as a candidate and many others where I was in the role of the recruiter. When I was the one being interviewed, I always found the interview to be most effective when the recruiter shared a bit about themselves and their journey. The factors that made these interviews ineffective is when there were questions that were simply “Yes” or “No” answers as this left little room for me to expand on the topic and attempt to stand out from other candidates.

This differed from my experience when I was approaching the process from the recruiting standpoint. Interviews at my job are conducted with another manager to allow both people to get to know the potential hire. Getting to know the candidate by starting off with introductions has been the most effective aspect. This allows the candidate to warm up to answering questions and understand a bit more about the job itself. As shared from the article “The Perfect Hire,” The goal of the recruiter “is to find the person who best fits the requirements and culture of a given job.” This has always been the goal of the interviews I have conducted, as the grocery store I work at has a very specific culture.

To prevent bias, the process starts with online applications where individuals are only filtered out if there listed availability does not fit with the needs of the role. This practice is noted in “7 Practical Ways to Reduce Bias in the Hiring Process” as choosing to go blind when reviewing resumes. Another tip from this article is having standardized interviews. This is another strategy utilized in the interviews I conduct as we are given a set of questions from the company and this addresses the most important aspects of the job, such as communication, teamwork, and customer experience.

To build a diverse workforce, an effective tactic that myself and fellow managers use is to stray away from hiring someone who reminds us of another person in the store. This allows us to bring on people with a variety of personalities and skills. Similar to the lesson taught in the book “First Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers do Differently,” the philosophy of the job involves managers defining the outcomes and being comfortable with each employee finding their own route to complete the task. We often discuss how there is no one “right way” to get any part of the job done within the store.

In tying this into the concepts of reliability, validity, and utility, the company has made many strides in creating the standardized questions that relate to the core competencies of the job. The interview process is reliable because it is consistent with each candidate, it has validity because we are directly asking about the most important factors of the job to determine if the candidate would be successful upon hiring and training for the role, and it has utility because the standardized questions help weed out candidates that are not a good fit early on to save time and money in the overall process.

Sources:

Buckingham, M., & Coffman, C. W. (2014). First, break all the rules : What the world’s greatest managers do differently. Gallup Press.

Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Steinmetz, C. (2013). The perfect hire. Scientific American Mind, 24(3), 42-47. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/24942432

Knight, R., (2018). 7 practical ways to reduce bias in the hiring process. SHRM. https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/talent-acquisition/7-practical-ways-to-reduce-bias-hiring-process


Categories
Uncategorized

Why Job Descriptions Matter

From the course lecture on Job Analysis, a job description acts as the summary, identification, task statement, and required working conditions an individual should expect in the job. Ultimately, the job description holds the DNA of the job. The article Job Worth Doing: Update Descriptions shares that “the basic job description is the foundation of nearly every HR function.” It is of the upmost importance for a company to present an accurate and updated job description for its candidates.

My experience with job descriptions is through my work as a retail manager. I work for Trader Joe’s, and on our website there is a brief summary of the different roles in the company. Other than this, there are brief descriptions on Glassdoor and Indeed when jobs are posted. I know that when I stepped up to a management role, there was no job description handed to me on how my role would change. I learned from those around me, and the established structure within the store of which tasks managers complete and when. With hiring, my boss and I are able to hire people directly without the inclusion of the HR department.

I feel my company provide a more clear and specific description to people about what their role is. The most significant core value of the retail chain I work for is “WOW Customer Experience.” The most common complaints from employees about the job is working with customers (even though this represents the foundation and focus of their role) as well as how physical the role is. A more specific and direct job description will help people determine if working with the general public in this capacity is the right job for them.

There are a few strategies a company can take to make sure their job description is maximizing the potential for the company. The first aspect is staying on top of changes that call for the description to be altered. The Job Worth Doing article shares that description should be updated at least once a year, but in reality, there will be multiple changes and restructuring of roles that happen within a company that should immediately be reflected in the job description. From the Definitive Guide to Recruiting, the second step shared in the hiring process is specifying the job. This includes ensuring that any applicant who goes to apply for the role has a clear understanding of the demands, expectations, and the skills needed to succeed. Candidates will be much more appreciative and more likely to stay with their chosen company they know their company was direct and honest with them about their role from the beginning.

Sources:

Fernández-Aráoz, C., Groysberg, B., & Nohria, N. (2009). The Definitive Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad. In Harvard business review (Vol. 87, Number 5). Harvard Business Review.

Kathryn Tyler. (2013). Job worth doing: Update descriptions. SHRM. https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/hr-magazine/job-worth-update-descriptions

Categories
Uncategorized

Hello world!

Welcome to blogs.oregonstate.edu. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!