Every company wants to make hiring top talent more predictable. Some even go as far as putting a Six Sigma task force together to begin the process. Yet they’re all unlikely to succeed. Six Sigma is about process improvement. Unfortunately, you can’t implement process improvement until you have a process to improve. Using Six Sigma approaches to improve the hiring process are doomed to failure ó unless you first get a One Sigma process implemented. This is far tougher than it seems, and yet it is the key step necessary to making hiring top talent a systematic business process. Unfortunately, too many companies ignore this vital first step. A One Sigma process has the following primary characteristic: everybody hires the same way. Even if it’s bad, everybody does the same thing. There are some rules behind it, and forms to fill in, and people get penalized for not following it. This is the type of basic process you need before you can have process improvement. For hiring, the rules need to involve how requisitions are approved, how candidates are interviewed, how they’re selected, and how offers are negotiated and put together. While simple and obvious, few companies have such a system that everyone uses. Worse yet, most companies think they do. How does your company measure up on this standard? Just having something in place that everybody uses is more important than having a process in place that works. While this sounds counterintuitive, I think this is why there have been few major improvements in the hiring process in the last 30 years. The hard part in any change implementation program is getting 100% user adoption. Consider your ATS as an example. A low user adoption rate is the biggest inherent problem with most applicant tracking systems. Great features combined with low utilization is a big time and money waster! Some examples are in order to prove the case for process adoption over effectiveness. From my experience, the hiring process at all companies is far less rigorous than the capital investment process; in most companies it is far simpler than getting reimbursed for travel expenses. Both of these basic business processes offer guidance on how and why a basic One Sigma hiring and selection process is all that’s needed to get hiring under control. In most companies, a $250,000 capital expenditure requires some type of rigorous cost benefit analysis coupled with an ROI calculation. At a minimum, this takes a few hours to complete and includes a description of the cost savings, an analysis of options, and some type of implementation plan. The cost of a bad or weak hire is at least $100,000 even for a $50,000 person, and this is every year whether the person stays or is replaced. So it seems pretty easy to justify the need for an equally rigorous hiring and selection process. In the case of a capital investment, the process adoption and effectiveness collectively lead to good business decisions. This is the benefit of having a good process in place that everyone uses. Consider travel expense reimbursement as an example at the other extreme. Getting paid for travel expenses requires detailed reporting, accurate tracking of expenses, and a written form to be submitted with itemized receipts. On top of this, there is an audit team in place, tracking accuracy and insuring compliance. I’m sure we all have examples of how this has been taken to extremes. Here’s mine. On one recent project with a major company, I had to spend at least an hour and a half trying to reconcile the difference between a $66 parking receipt and the $44 I charged to the company. One of the days was charged to another project, but the company accounting department wouldn’t pay any amount other than the one on the receipt, and my attempt to just forgo reimbursement rather than get a new receipt was met with three follow-up calls. If nothing else, high adoption rates coupled with a bureaucratic process at least prevent fraudulent charges. The underlying principle here is that, in order to implement change, there needs to be a standardized process with some type of policing mechanism to make sure that everyone follows the rules. This basic concept has somehow been overlooked when implementing hiring process changes. From my observations, at most companies each individual manager and each recruiter hires and selects candidates using different techniques. Job descriptions range from useless to “I’ll know the person when I see him,” so even though the req approval process is the most rigorous, it’s still based on an arbitrary measurement criteria. Adding competency models and behavioral interviewing helps a bit, but if few managers use the tools the same way, the process must be considered out of control. For comparative purposes, Six Sigma process control means fewer than one error in 100 thousand steps. For most companies, hiring is about 50/50 ó that’s about .2 Sigma! One Sigma process control would equate to 68% accuracy. So to me, that’s a pretty good target. Here is my idea for a practical hiring process that’s not too bureaucratic. If you could obtain 100% user adoption, hiring errors would be reduced dramatically. Steps Needed to Make Hiring Top Talent a One Sigma Process
Walk before you run. That’s the key here. Getting 100% user adoption with some basic system in place is more important than having a better system with low utilization. This alone will eliminate the most common cause of all hiring errors ó emotional and intuitive decisions made in the first 30 minutes of the interview. Using some type of rigorous assessment approach will make the process even more effective. This can easily be justified. Hiring a person is at least as important as making any investment. Process control and process improvement are critical steps in making hiring top talent a more systematic, business-like process. It’s starts by first putting a process in place. Without the process, you’re just mistaking activity for progress.