Hiring Wisdom: Here’s Why You Should Keep a Decisions Log

Last month, for the fifth year in row, I did a program for Texas A&M University and, as often happens, I think I learned just as much from the attendees as they did from me.

Before that presentation, I had never even heard of Decisions Log, but since then, I’ve started to keep one. Amazing what you can learn when you keep track of each major decision, what caused to you to make the decision, and the reasons you took the resultant actions.

For example, suppose you just hired a new employee:

Why did you hire this person?
What was the impetus for this decision at this time?
Why this person over others?
What were the positive and negative considerations?

As you hire more people, it is interesting and informative to see what patterns develop and what you could do to make better decisions down the road.

P.S. — This does not apply only to hiring, it works for all major decisions.

Mel Kleiman will talk how Great HR is Simple — It’s Just Not Easy at the TLNT Transform conference in Austin, TX Feb. 26-28, 2012. Click here for more information on attending this event.

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