FirstWho

The Hiring Playbook

In many organizations, hiring leads to inconsistent results. Hiring managers often pass over more capable candidates, choosing instead those who seem perfect on paper or make a great first impression but fall short on the job. This mismatch leads to costly mistakes. Why does this happen, and how can we fix it? The answer lies deeper than you might think.

Despite good intentions, the rush to fill vacancies often leads to errors. Companies reuse generic job descriptions, ignoring what makes a person successful in their context. Another company might use structured interviews but ask irrelevant questions, collecting useless information. Some organizations adopt rigorous evaluation methods with detailed rubrics only to base hiring decisions on traits outside the criteria. These missteps show how well-meaning practices can go wrong, leading to costly do-overs.

We’ve developed a playbook outlining eight strategies to make hiring more predictive of performance. With these tools, you’ll gather reliable evidence for informed hiring decisions, recognizing true talent, and supporting diversity initiatives.

Hiring Plays

1. Define your ideal candidate
2. Equip your interview panel
3. Turn interviews into research
4. Decide using credible evidence
5. Perfect the candidate interaction
6. Address diversity through systems
7. Use the right tool for the job
8. Embrace AI responsibly
PLAY 1

1. Define your ideal candidate

Companies frequently stumble in hiring because they don’t fully grasp what they need in a candidate. This misunderstanding results in poorly crafted job descriptions and irrelevant interview questions. A thorough job analysis—encompassing necessary skills, tools, and personal attributes—is crucial for identifying the right talent.

Checklist

  • Collaborate with experts to identify the skills, technical knowledge, judgment, and personal attributes required for the role.
  • Interview top performers to understand what makes them excel.
  • Define the critical soft skills needed for the role and establish methods to evaluate them during interviews.

Key Questions

  • Are we using the appropriate recruitment channels to align with our candidate personas and attract top talent?
  • Do our job descriptions and recruitment messages reflect our candidate personas?
  • Are we analyzing performance reviews to understand why certain employees do better than others?
  • How frequently do we update our candidate personas based on achievements and challenges in our organization?
  • Are we using feedback from team members to refine our candidate personas?

Materials

PLAY 2

2. Equip your interview panel

Interviewers often feel anxious and frustrated when they aren’t adequately prepared, leading to ineffective interviews. This lack of preparation introduces unconscious bias, rating errors, and poor evidence gathering, all of which undermine sound hiring decisions. With proper training and clear guidelines, interviewers can gain confidence, reduce errors, and significantly improve hiring outcomes.

Checklist

  • ☐ Equip interviewers with structured interview techniques and standardized questions to ensure fairness and consistency.
  • ☐ Emphasize the importance of creating a welcoming and respectful atmosphere for all candidates.
  • ☐ Instruct interviewers to take notes during interviews to capture candidate responses accurately.
  • ☐ Train interviewers to recognize and mitigate unconscious biases throughout the interview process.
  • ☐ Ensure interviewers are thoroughly familiar with job requirements and candidate personas for reliable assessments.
  • ☐ Teach interviewers the value of active listening, allowing candidates sufficient time to respond and the patience required to accept poor responses.

Key Questions

  • How do we ensure our interviewers are trained to provide consistent and fair evaluations?
  • Do our interviewers fully understand the job requirements and candidate profiles they assess?
  • How often do we update our interviewer training materials to reflect best practices?
  • Are our interviewers prepared to handle challenging situations and unexpected questions effectively?
  • What feedback systems do we have to gather insights from interviewers about their interviewing experiences?

Materials

PLAY 3

3. Turn interviews into research

Approach interviewing like a scientific study, using predictive validity to ensure your methods accurately forecast job performance. Select credible assessments for each skill, ask clear and focused questions, and avoid leading candidates toward desired responses. Encourage candidates to provide detailed, story-like responses to safeguard your organization from disruptive hires. These narratives offer richer information, allowing interviewers to make accurate ratings and spot potential red flags.

Checklist

  • ☐ Develop structured interview content that aligns with “must-have” competencies and job requirements.
  • ☐ Use behavioral questions—those about past actions, not hypotheticals—to elicit examples from past work experiences.
  • ☐ Incorporate job knowledge questions to evaluate candidates' technical expertise.
  • ☐ Avoid compound questions to ensure a clear and straightforward evaluation process.
  • ☐ Design questions that discourage rehearsed or expected responses.
  • ☐ Encourage candidates to share detailed stories about their past behaviors and decisions for deeper insights.

Key Questions

  • Are you using skills tests, situational judgment tests, work simulations, and presentations in addition to interview questions?
  • How do you teach interviewers the "researcher" concept to promote a scientific approach and emphasize predictive validity in gathering information?
  • Has practicing interviews helped interviewers clarify the aim of each question or assessment method?
  • Do interviewers feel confident probing candidates for more details without leading them to desired responses?

Materials

PLAY 4

4. Decide using credible evidence

Using evidence at every stage of the hiring process ensures fairness, consistency, and better decision-making, showcasing a company’s commitment to integrity. This method results in higher-quality hires, lower turnover, and an enhanced reputation. Organizations can take pride in their fair and effective recruitment processes by aligning hiring practices with their core values.

Checklist

  • ☐ Conduct structured interviews with precise rating scales to ensure objective candidate assessments.
  • ☐ Train hiring managers on evidence-based selection and the importance of data-driven decision-making.
  • ☐ Utilize external benchmarks and internal performance data to refine your selection process and continuously improve.
  • ☐ Consolidate candidate ratings and feedback into a scorecard to efficiently use interview insights.

Key Questions

  • How do we currently collect and utilize data to enhance our hiring decisions?
  • How do we ensure the reliability and validity of our assessment tools?
  • What measures are in place to minimize biases in our selection process?
  • How do we evaluate the impact of our selection process on first-year turnover and overall employee retention?

Materials

PLAY 5

5. Perfect the candidate interaction

Ignoring candidate experience undermines hiring efforts, driving away talented individuals with unnecessary complexities and poor communication. To make a positive impression, streamline the process, set clear expectations, respect personal details, and maintain consistent communication. By enhancing the candidate experience, companies can attract more applicants, build a strong talent pool, and improve their reputation, ultimately leading to better hiring outcomes.

Checklist

  • ☐ Clearly outline the application process in the job description to set accurate expectations.
  • ☐ Streamline your application process to minimize the time required for completion.
  • ☐ Update all written communications, including rejection emails, to ensure they are respectful and personalized.
  • ☐ Prevent the “application black hole” by providing every candidate with a response, regardless of the outcome.
  • ☐ Collect pronouns and record pronunciation on a digital job application form.

Key Questions

  • How do you gather feedback from candidates about their experience during the hiring process?
  • How do you keep candidates informed about their application status?
  • How do you train hiring managers and interviewers to ensure a positive candidate experience?
  • What technology or tools do you use to streamline the recruitment process, and how effective are they?

Materials

PLAY 6

6. Address diversity through systems

To truly benefit from diversity, it must be embedded in our organizational DNA through strategic, policy-driven systems, not as last-minute fixes. Building relationships with different communities and using unbiased, skills-based assessments ensure fair and effective recruitment. This approach sustains inclusion and maximizes the advantages of a diverse workforce.

Checklist

  • ☐ Develop a recruiting, selection, and hiring plan that outlines how diversity goals are integrated into standard operating procedures.
  • ☐ Ensure that leaders and hiring managers understand, support, and implement hiring practices according to the organization's guidelines.
  • ☐ Build relationships with diverse communities and educational institutions to facilitate proactive outreach, avoiding last-minute recruitment.
  • ☐ Use relevant metrics to track the progress of outreach and hiring efforts tailored to the organization's capacity and maturity level.

Key Questions

  • Are our diversity and inclusion policies seamlessly integrated into our core organizational values and objectives, or are they treated as separate initiatives?
  • Do we utilize objective, skills-based hiring practices and structured interviewing processes to ensure fair and unbiased candidate evaluations?
  • Are senior leaders and managers visibly committed to diversity and inclusion efforts, and do they effectively communicate its importance throughout the organization?
  • Have we assessed our organizational capacity to determine realistic and sustainable diversity strategies for future growth?

Materials

PLAY 7

7. Use the right tool for the job

Strategically using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) in hiring streamlines recruiting, improves candidate communication, and ensures consistent evaluations. By reducing manual workloads and minimizing distractions, an ATS allows staff to focus on the substance of hiring, not the mechanics.

Checklist

  • ☐ Automate tasks like interview scheduling and candidate follow-ups with the ATS to save time and reduce administrative work.
  • ☐ Evaluate the ATS's usability to ensure it meets the needs of recruiters, hiring managers, and stakeholders.
  • ☐ Provide comprehensive training for all users to ensure effective use of the ATS.
  • ☐ Continuously collect user feedback to improve the ATS and address any issues.
  • ☐ Ensure the ATS complies with data security and privacy regulations to protect candidate information.

Key Questions

  • Do we need to work on maintaining consistent and fair evaluations across all interviewers and hiring managers?
  • Are inefficiencies in scheduling interviews and communicating with candidates slowing us down?
  • Is our recruitment data scattered across systems, making tracking and analysis difficult?
  • Are our hiring managers and recruiters overwhelmed with administrative tasks instead of focusing on strategy?

Materials

PLAY 8

8. Embrace AI responsibly

AI tools can significantly enhance hiring efficiency when used responsibly, but they should never be the sole arbiters of human potential due to inherent biases and their lack of mindfulness. AI excels at developing job descriptions, parsing resumes, and simplifying scheduling, freeing people to focus on areas where human judgment is crucial. This balanced approach ensures a fair, efficient, and effective hiring process.

Checklist

  • ☐ Leverage AI tools to identify each role's essential skills and competencies.
  • ☐ Automate resume processing with AI to extract crucial information and reduce data entry.
  • ☐ Use AI to create compelling job ads that attract top talent on various platforms.

Key Questions

  • How do we ensure fairness and accuracy in AI-driven resume parsing and candidate screening?
  • How do we measure the effectiveness of AI-generated job ads in attracting diverse, qualified candidates?
  • What steps are we taking to protect candidates' data privacy when using AI in recruitment?
  • What standards ensure the ethical and transparent use of AI in the hiring process?

Materials

Key Concepts

  • Task Inventory
  • Critical Incident Approach
  • “Must-have” Job Requirements
  • Performance Standards
  • Interview Guidelines
  • Unconscious Bias Training
  • Behavioral Interview Questions
  • Situational Judgment Tests
  • Skills Tests
  • Work Simulations
  • Project/Portfolio Presentation
  • Interview Evaluation Form
  • Rating & Recommendation Scales
  • Interview Dry Run
  • Interview Scorecards
  • Hiring Policy
  • Job Description
  • Job Application Form
  • Message Templates
  • Social Media Job Announcements
  • Diversity Outreach Strategy
  • Talent Database
  • Applicant Tracking System
  • Job Analysis Prompt
  • Job Description Prompt
  • Interview Question Prompt

Task Inventory

A "task inventory" is a job analysis approach that systematically documents and categorizes all the activities and responsibilities associated with a particular job. This method entails observing employees performing their tasks and identifying their specific duties, the frequency of these tasks, and the skills required to accomplish them.

By compiling this inventory, organizations can create accurate job descriptions and confidently determine the essential skills and competencies needed for job performance. This approach ensures that job descriptions are grounded in actual work activities, leading to more effective hiring and training processes.

Critical Incident Approach

The "critical incident" approach to shaping a selection process involves identifying and analyzing specific adverse events from the past that are associated with the same job role or a recent predecessor. This method focuses on pinpointing moments when job performance fell short and using these instances to refine the selection criteria and processes. Here's a breakdown of how it works.

This approach ensures that the selection process is grounded in real-world job performance issues. It aims to hire candidates who are better equipped to handle the role's challenges and avoid past pitfalls.

“Must-have” Job Requirements

“Must-have” job requirements are the essential skills, experiences, judgment, and qualifications a candidate needs to perform a job. These are the core criteria that ensure the person can handle the responsibilities and challenges of the role. By distinguishing between “Must-Haves,’ “Nice-to-haves,” and “Not-haves,” hiring managers can ensure that the most important topics get evaluated in the inherently limited time of engaging with and evaluating candidates. Additionally, enumerating competencies helps reviewers provide feedback and identify gaps.

Performance Standards

Performance standards are specific criteria or benchmarks that define the expected levels of performance for employees in their roles. These standards are crucial for both performance management and hiring processes, as they provide clear expectations and measurable goals.

Interview Guidelines

Interview guidelines ensure hiring managers and interviewers provide a consistent candidate experience, generating reliable evidence to support informed decisions. These guidelines outline structural aspects of the interview process, including the number of interview rounds, the composition of the interview panel, and the specific questions to be asked. They also detail interviewer conduct, emphasizing the importance of consistency, note-taking, and active listening. Additionally, the guidelines describe the scoring process and how the decision to hire will be made after the interviews.

Unconscious Bias Training

Anti-bias training for interviewers and hiring managers addresses a broad spectrum of biases, including confirmation bias, where one seeks information to support preconceived notions, and halo bias, where the perception of one positive trait influences the overall judgment of a candidate. This training emphasizes recognizing and mitigating these biases to ensure fair and equitable candidate assessments. By being mindful of these biases, interviewers can actively work to overcome them, leading to more objective and inclusive hiring practices focusing on a candidate’s actual qualifications and potential.

Behavioral Interview Questions

Behavioral interview questions (questions about past actions) elicit responses that reveal a candidate’s past actions and experiences, providing concrete evidence of how they handled specific situations. Unlike hypotheticals, which ask candidates to speculate on what they might do in a given scenario, behavioral questions focus on real-life examples, making them more predictive of future performance. When candidates are encouraged to respond with in-depth, story-like narratives, interviewers gain a richer understanding of their competencies, decision-making processes, and interpersonal skills. These detailed responses also help interviewers identify red flags when the stories lack coherence or credibility, ensuring a more thorough and reliable assessment of a candidate’s suitability for the role.

Situational Judgment Tests

Situational Judgment Tests (SJTs) are a crucial tool in the interview process, particularly for complex jobs where assessing a candidate’s judgment is as important as evaluating their skills. SJTs present candidates with hypothetical, job-related scenarios and ask them to choose the most appropriate response from a set of options. Unlike traditional multiple-choice questions, there isn’t necessarily a perfect answer. Instead, the format reveals how candidates prioritize and navigate complex situations, offering insights into their decision-making processes and problem-solving abilities. This approach helps interviewers understand a candidate’s judgment without signaling the “correct” response the organization might be looking for. It provides a more authentic gauge of how they might perform in real-world settings.

Skills Tests

In an interview setting, a “skills test” is a practical evaluation designed to measure a candidate’s proficiency in specific technical abilities directly relevant to the job. A skills test provides a crucial benchmark for roles requiring technical skills like computer programming or writing. Ideally concise and well-structured, this test allows candidates to demonstrate their competencies in real time within the interview setting. It serves not only as a filter to rule out those who lack critical, frequently used job skills but also as a way to showcase the candidate’s capabilities in a realistic context. Importantly, when thoughtfully designed, these tests aren’t burdensome for candidates; instead, they allow individuals to exhibit their expertise and problem-solving approach, ensuring that only those genuinely qualified progress further in the hiring process.

Work Simulations

Work simulations in an interview setting are immersive exercises where interviewers and candidates collaborate on artificial yet realistic work scenarios. These simulations provide a dynamic glimpse into how a candidate performs. By engaging in these lifelike tasks, candidates demonstrate their problem-solving abilities, interpersonal skills, and adaptability in real time. For interviewers, this process offers invaluable insights into a candidate’s working style, decision-making processes, and potential team dynamics. Essentially, work simulations create a mini-preview of the candidate’s on-the-job performance.

Project/Portfolio Presentation

In an interview setting, a portfolio or project presentation is when a candidate showcases their past work or a significant project, detailing the challenges faced, strategies employed, and outcomes achieved. This approach particularly applies to roles requiring demonstrable expertise in creative fields, engineering, or research. Unlike standard interview questions, which often elicit brief, surface-level responses, a portfolio presentation allows candidates to dive deeply into their experiences, providing a richer, more comprehensive view of their skills and thought processes.

Interview Evaluation Form

An “Interview Evaluation Form” is a structured tool interviewers use to capture and organize their observations and assessments of a candidate during the interview process. This form serves multiple purposes: it allows interviewers to take detailed notes on what the candidate said and did, provides a systematic way to rate the candidate’s responses across various competencies, and includes a section for the interviewer’s recommendation on whether the candidate should advance in the hiring process. The ease of use of these forms is crucial, as any delays in submitting evaluations can introduce bias and rating errors. By streamlining the documentation process, Interview Evaluation Forms ensure that assessments are timely, consistent, and accurate, ultimately supporting fair and informed hiring decisions.

Rating & Recommendation Scales

Rating & recommendation scales in the interview process are essential tools that help standardize the assessment of candidates. Typically, a rating scale consists of a range of options such as No Credit, Poor, Satisfactory, Good, and Excellent, enabling interviewers to assign a quality score to each candidate’s responses. These qualitative labels often correspond to numeric values, for instance, 0 to 4, which can then be aggregated to form an overall interview score. Additionally, recommendation scales clearly and concisely enable interviewers to express their final analysis. Standard options include Yes, No, Strong Yes, and Strong No, ensuring the interviewer’s recommendation is unambiguous and easily interpretable. Together, these scales streamline the evaluation process, promoting consistency and reducing bias in candidate comparisons.

Interview Dry Run

Performing an interview dry run helps interviewers feel more prepared before conducting actual interviews. This rehearsal process allows interviewers to simulate the interview environment, practice asking questions, and refine their techniques. During a dry run, interviewers can address any uncertainties about the purpose or wording of specific questions to troubleshoot evaluation content early.

Interview Scorecards

Interview scorecards ensure that the information gathered during interviews aligns with the evaluation rubric, the backbone of a structured interview process. These scorecards provide a standardized format for decision-makers to see how candidates performed. Automated Interview Scorecards take this a step further by aggregating candidate ratings and recommendations, thus simplifying comparing candidates in a rubric-aligned manner.

Hiring Policy

A hiring policy is the bedrock of any organization's hiring strategy, standardizing processes to ensure that best practices become the norm rather than the exception. This policy provides a clear framework for hiring decisions, promoting consistency and fairness across all levels of the organization. By adhering to a standardized approach, companies can mitigate the risks of bias and subjectivity, ensuring fair candidate evaluation. Moreover, well-defined hiring policies build trust among staff members, especially those who might need more clarification on the intricacies of the recruitment and selection processes.

Job Description

We all know job descriptions list qualifications and responsibilities, but most organizations miss opportunities to enhance the candidate experience starting with their job descriptions. For example, they omit salary ranges, causing guesswork and wasted time, or they’re written in unclear jargon. Worse, some use exclusionary terms or aren’t accessible to those with assistive technology. A great job description is clear, inclusive, inviting, transparent about salary, and specific about the role. It welcomes everyone by avoiding exclusionary language and ensuring accessibility. In a world where talent is crucial, your job description is your first impression. Make it count!

Job Application Form

Companies often frustrate candidates with lengthy application forms, asking for duplicate information, and requiring log-ins. These hurdles make the process tedious and discourage top talent. Streamlining forms, eliminating redundant fields, and allowing applications without mandatory log-ins show respect for candidates’ time and effort, ultimately attracting better candidates. Today, candidates should be able to simply provider their resume and have much of their personal information auto-populated. This leaves more time to add job-specific questions to help with the screening process.

Message Templates

When we consider job email templates, it’s easy to overlook their significance. However, thinking about them in advance isn’t just a procedural task; it’s a strategic move that can dramatically enhance the candidate experience.

Imagine this: a candidate receives an email from your company. The subject line is engaging, the content personalized, and the message clear. That candidate immediately feels valued and intrigued.

Here are the scenarios to cover:

  1. Initial Outreach/Recruiting Pitch
  2. Follow-Up After Application/Receipt
  3. Interview Scheduling
  4. Stage-Specific Rejection
  5. Offer Letter

Social Media Job Announcements

Posting job announcements on LinkedIn or other social media platforms benefits from creativity and brevity. Use engaging visuals, such as company culture photos or short videos, to create a connection. Leverage hashtags and keywords to increase visibility and reach the right audience. Encourage sharing and engagement by asking followers to tag potential candidates. Finally, respond promptly to comments and inquiries, demonstrating that your company values engagement and is eager to connect with top talent.

Diversity Outreach Strategy

A Diversity Outreach Strategy significantly enhances the diversity of candidate pools by implementing a focused and systematic plan for connecting with diverse communities and professional organizations. This strategy involves defining outreach goals and conducting organizational research to identify specific reasons for the lack of diversity in candidate pools. It then applies targeted interventions to repair, build, or strengthen relationships between the organization and underrepresented communities.

Talent Database

Maintaining a talent database helps increase organizational diversity by allowing continuous engagement with past applicants from diverse backgrounds. This database enables the organization to keep detailed records of candidates’ skills, experiences, and interests, making reaching out with relevant job opportunities easier. By maintaining and nurturing these relationships, the organization can ensure that diverse candidates remain in the pipeline for future openings. This proactive approach broadens the pool of potential hires and demonstrates a commitment to inclusivity and long-term relationship-building.

Applicant Tracking System

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a software application that automates and streamlines the recruitment process by managing the entire lifecycle of job applications. It helps companies operate a fair and efficient hiring process by enabling standardized job postings, resume screening, and candidate communication. The ATS ensures that all applicants are evaluated consistently based on predefined criteria, reducing biases and human error. Additionally, it facilitates better organization and tracking of candidate information, leading to quicker decision-making and improved hiring outcomes by matching the best candidates to the right roles more effectively.

Job Analysis Prompt

Thinking step-by-step as an experienced non-profit executive director, consider 15 important tasks regularly performed in the role of executive director, then consider what competencies are required to perform these tasks. List both the tasks and the required job competencies.

Job Description Prompt

As a content strategist and expert in the role of non-profit executive director, create an engaging and inclusive job description based on the required job competencies described in the previous response for an executive director.

Interview Question Prompt

As an expert in methods of user research and interrogation, write a behavioral interview question that asks for a candidate for the role executive director of a non-profit that provides insight into challenges they faced developing a strategic plan in a previous role. Include a list of positive indicators.