Before Posting an Open Job
Your financials say you can afford to add a position and you know how much you can spend to fill the job. You feel pretty good about things and you have a good product and a good customer base and you know you have an attractive proposition to offer someone. That said you know your business has no line item in the budget to write off a bad hire. In addition to strengthening your behavior based interview skills, you know that before your post your job you need to have a solid performance sketch to guide you in this search. Doing your homework up front will help guide you through the interviewing process and lay the groundwork for helping ensure your search will be successful and your new employee will succeed.
In creating a performance sketch you go beyond the traditional job description. A performance sketch includes important criteria such as educational requirements, certifications if necessary, specific experiences and preferences and its key difference is that it describes what the person needs to have to be successful in this position.
So how do you start? Start with the skills necessary for the position. Then identify at the critical performance goals this position requires for each skill. Be specific. Quantify success if you can. Most importantly, be honest with these metrics. How realistic are they? For example a customer service representative performance sketch might begin like this:
Skill Performance Goal
Customer Service Experience Exceeding expectations resulting in near perfect customer survey scores
Troubleshooting issues Having at least a 90% level one close-out rate
Upselling cross functional products Attaining 50% of monthly upselling quota
Input customer orders into system Customer order entry with 95% accuracy for first time input
Pleasant phone presence Smile is heard on every call
Team player necessary Has demonstrated history of adding value to working team
Think of this as working the problem backwards. You know what you would like to see from this position. Rather than describe the position, what it does and what it takes to do the job; talk about how someone will succeed by giving clear responsibilities and outcomes for the position; outcomes that are based on measurable and objective criteria; utilize action verbs such "increase" "improve" "sustain" versus passive verbs as "responsible for" or "having"; determine key objectives and time frames for these objectives to give candidates a clearer idea of what is expected of them.
By preparing a performance sketch you are laying a foundation for your hiring process and for this new employee. Not only have you begun with objective criteria for hiring this person and have an accurate job description, you can:
- Base your behavior-based interview questions upon this criteria
- Align a candidates past behavior to your performance needs
- Set a foundation of expectations for your new hire once they start
- Base performance evaluation upon this information (provided you have metrics to measure progress)
- Use the model for future hires as your business continues to grow
Getting into the habit of doing some work up front before going out into the marketplace will only serve to help you. Just as job seekers have a few seconds to capture your attention with their resume, you also have a few seconds to capture the attention of your prospective job seekers with your job posting. This will also help your posting stand out from the rest.
There is an old axiom in recruiting that "past behavior is a strong indication of future performance". It takes more than a gut feeling these days to find the right employee for an opening. By systemizing your process to using objective criteria you will elevate your interviewing to a higher plain. By using performance sketches you will clearly describe what you seek and you will help write a job posting that stands out in the mix of others. You will be in a better position to assess that prospective talent and hire a candidate who will help your business grow and prosper.
