The Hiring Puzzle: Addressing Stress through Streamlined Hiring

Ever wondered why the HR department in your company seems so stressed out? Hint: It's got something to do with the hiring process. This episode is a deep dive into the unique challenges, expectations, and pressures HR professionals face every day. We discuss why having a finger in every pie - from payroll to employee relations - not only increases stress levels but also may divert focus from the critical task of hiring. 

But don't despair, we've got solutions! We're talking about creating a hiring process that is tailored specifically to your team, fostering open conversations with candidates, and developing an effective feedback loop. These strategies could be transformative, not only improving the hiring process but also enhancing the effectiveness of your HR team. So, kick back, relax, and let's decode the complexities of the HR role together in this episode. Trust us, it’s something you don’t want to miss!

We love to hear your hiring experience, whether you're a hiring manager with 100s of hires, about to make your first hire, or an applicant that has a story to tell. Share your stories with Max & Mike at hiringexperiencepod@gmail.com

This podcast and the matters discussed herein are for informational purposes only and should not to be construed as advice for a particular company or person. This podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional or legal advice.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

This is the Hiring Experience the podcast that helps you break down the art and science of hiring. Hosted by Max and Mike friends, founders and creators of rapid hiring, on a mission to bring an end to the resume, bringing you tactical advice to help you attract, select and retain the best talent. This podcast and the matters discussed herein are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as advice for a particular company or person. This podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional or legal advice.

Max: 0:37

All right. So today we're going to talk about the role of your HR professional. Whether you call it or call that person your HR generalist or head of HR or office administrator executive in your office the title changes across many different companies, but ultimately we have this position and expect a lot of different functions out of it. So a lot of the time we'll see that person responsible for office administration and HR and employee relations and all those different things. That person will be responsible for your payroll, they'll be responsible for reviews, they'll be responsible for your hiring process, they'll be responsible for benefits and compensation and they're responsible for a variety of things that fall under almost administrative work within the company, and this really builds out a requirement to be an expert in a lot of different fields, because as much as they're administrative in nature, they're not the same activity by any means, like they're not.

Max: 1:48

Payroll is much different than hiring, is much different than career planning, is much different than benefits, so all of these things don't really track on the same line of skills and expertise. So this person is then required to learn a ton of different roles. So, first of all, hats off. But it does create quite the burden and could create quite the stress level, being expected to be an expert in all of these different things to keep the organization running smoothly, right? So one thing that we touch on a lot is the hiring process and how it affects and is intertwined with your business, whether it's in your business growth or your business success, or your culture of your company and all these different aspects. And when something so important is and not to take anything away, but it's one aspect of a role for somebody who's doing 10 different things, sometimes it's not being done to its fullest capacity, right. It's just not possible in the amount of time that that person will have. Right, it is nothing against the person, it's just there's too many things to do, right?

Mike: 2:57

Yeah, and this is where we talk about sometimes about a lot of it is understanding what each individual component of the role is and making sure that you have equipped them with the best tools to do each role not just from a high level of their job. As you might see it, and where this pertains to what we talk about and what we deal with in the hiring process, is that your HR generalist is often your front line of your hiring process and, in some cases, much more than that. Some in your small to medium sized businesses, they are your judge, jury and executioner of your hiring process, and which is completely fine.

Max: 3:42

Well, this may be the same person that's responsible for financial functions as well, and bookkeeping.

Mike: 3:48

Right and there's no money in the hiring process. However, though, if they are all of those things, there is this requirement that they need to know a deep level of each position that they're hiring for, and that falls on them, but it also needs to be a responsibility of the person working in the org who has the knowledge of what that job is or is doing that job. And a lot of the times we see we talk to people that the HR person has determined that here's four or five great candidates because they're still using an old school batch system and they've sent them off to the manager, who will be the final authority in this case, and the manager comes back and we throw none of them are good, send me some more. And that's the only thing that they say to them. And what's missing a lot of the times in this is a feedback loop to continually improve this process.

Mike: 4:55

We know it's more time consuming to say this is what's wrong with this applicant. I don't like this, because that tells me they haven't had the experience or the skill set to do what we need them to do, and laying that out for your HR person or your frontline hiring person over time greatly improves the speed of which you are now able to hire, instead of it being a completely fixed process where they're just still evaluating based on the job description that they have, which could be completely inaccurate, which we've talked about or they're evaluating on their own personal opinion of what they think the job is and, to no fault of their own, they don't do that job. So they're going based off of what they can find by talking to the person who does that job, maybe what they find on Google, maybe what they think you liked in an applicant that they sent you that you did end up hiring and ultimately, all of this guessing is what it comes down to.

Max: 5:57

The guessing without like a close feedback loop is more time consuming, right? So if you're already expecting this person to do a hundred different roles effectively and let me be clear, like this is generally the procession of how a role is done until you reach a certain size where now there's somebody responsible for that specific role that the hiring or talent acquisition or something like that.

Mike: 6:22

Right, and even in that sense they still often have the same feedback role. Absolutely yes.

Max: 6:27

But when that does happen, then you're ultimately slowing this person down altogether, requiring a component of trial and error where really they don't have time to be doing trial and error already.

Mike: 6:41

Right, yeah, it needs to be a consistent learning loop as to allow everyone to understand what it is you're looking for and, from there, allow everyone to continually learn at the frontline what it is that they should be looking for. And without it, we're creating an environment where your HR person and this hiring manager are likely to get frustrated with each other. They'll look at them and be like they keep sending me crap candidates. I don't know why they always send me all these candidates but they never stop to take a minute to tell them what it exactly means to have a good candidate. Like, obviously you know, if you're telling yourself that these are crap candidates, write it down, send it along. It's an email, it takes two minutes, and same for the HR. They get frustrated, like they think they're sending great candidates up to you, up to the hiring manager. They're like, oh, they're never hiring any of these people I send them, they just take forever, yada, yada. You end up with this contention between the two and it's really a completely avoidable situation.

Max: 7:48

Yeah, and I mean that really speaks to the importance of the feedback loop. Now, what the different types of feedback you should be giving are is another segment, right.

Mike: 7:58

Yeah, and the base level of what we tell people for feedback is, if you're still using an old school, 1930s resume system, which we know most people are, then you look at it and you see, tell them here's the qualifications I don't care for, I don't like that. This license doesn't tell me that they know how to do this job, or these are not sometimes not real schools, or this is not a real license. Those kind of things, things that could be straight up just unfactual or lies on a resume, can help. That you can catch, that they may not catch. And then downward from there, like what are the proxies you're using on your screening process that the HR person is clearly not catching for you? Let them know in a nice way.

Max: 8:49

And there's multiple points of feedback. Right, there's feedback from, like you touched on already, where the candidate is not viewed as qualified. Where that's where the process ends is this candidate is not qualified for this role and feedback in that capacity why is this candidate not qualified? And then there's feedback in the realm of okay, this candidate is qualified and interviews been performed, and there's two segments of feedback at that point as well where you can start improving your process how was the interview from the hiring manager, the interviewer's perspective, and if that is not with your HR generalist or what have you, then you know how was the interview for the candidate, and that may be beneficial. To take a few, you know people that do end up being successful hires. Have them come back through to your HR person and do a feedback loop on how that interview was for them.

Mike: 9:49

Also looking at from your interviews and seeing what information in your interview did you learn that you could potentially Push down to the front lines of your hiring process to help you also still move faster and faster, by identifying that criteria up front Are all components of it, but at the end of the day, we really want to distress that. Sharing of information and feedback about the process and about what you're looking for is a key to making it move faster. Yeah, and not just assuming that the person's deliberately sending you crap applicants or that the hiring manager is not doing their job. By looking at the applicants and realizing that, like a lot of things, sometimes a simple miscommunication is where most of the problems come from.

Speaker 1: 10:43

Thank you for listening to the hiring experience. We hope you enjoyed this episode and learned something new about the art and science of hiring. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. This helps others discover the show. Share with a friend, colleague or anyone going through the hiring experience right now. Share your hiring experience with us at hiringexperiencepod at gmailcom.