3 Interview Tips to Ensure New Hire Success

From retention to compliance, there were a number of trending topics on the Ceridian HCM Blog this year. For the rest of December, we will be revisiting 10 of our most popular blog posts of 2016. Enjoy!

Workforce management is easier when the right team is in place, which means that hiring leaders should have processes and policies in place to ensure they’re choosing the right candidates.

Hiring the right employees is important for numerous reasons. Making calls like this is crucial. It affects morale, culture and productivity. Not to mention the cost of replacing any given employee can be significant. Josh Bersin, of Bersin by Deloitte, wrote about the various challenges that face employers who find themselves with high turnover rates.

He explained that tenured employees offer companies more value than those who cycle in and out. In addition, Bersin listed the various costs that companies with high turnover rates face:

• The cost of hiring, which includes advertising, interviewing and screening.
• Expenses associated with onboarding, such as training.
• Lower engagement as a result of higher turnover.
• Customer service mistakes and other errors.
• The cost of training.
• The loss of productivity. Bersin estimates it takes new hires between one and two years to reach the productivity levels of their predecessors.
• The cultural impact that comes with questions about turnover.

All of this seems to add up to one thing: High turnover rates are not good for a company, which means hiring right the first time is important. Job candidates should be considered as potential long-term employees rather than stop gaps. This can improve culture and engagement while simultaneously cutting costs.

Get leadership involved in the process

Culture is built from the top down, which makes it important for leadership to be involved in the hiring process, Entrepreneur noted. It is a company’s executives that ultimately decide how the company should be run, what sort of values matter most and where to focus. Leadership’s input into who should, or shouldn’t, be brought on board is important to maintaining culture and focus.

Stick with questions that get real answers

Sometimes interviews are filled with questions that require only yes or no answers. That won’t tell you anything about the candidate. Instead use questions to probe deeper, long-form responses from job candidates, Inc. suggested. The goal is to work around pre-rehearsed answers to get to the person behind the resume and talking points. This will show you whether he or she is really a good fit for the company.

Understand the four elements

Inc. listed four “super elements” that interviewers should get to the bottom of:

1. Attitude: An individual’s attitude regarding work stays relatively the same over time, meaning a positive attitude about one job probably means the same outlook toward others. Try to determine what the candidate thinks of past work experiences.
2. Culture fit: Leadership decides on culture and employees hold it together. Interviewers should look for people who fit in with the culture, rather than forcing them into it after the hire.
3. Sense of accountability: Does the person have direct control over his or her environment? If so this is a good sign. “Locus of control” – internal versus external – is considered one of the strongest indicators of future career success, Inc. explained.
4. Past successes: Whether a candidate has certain past job successes will indicate whether these achievements will continue in the future. Ask about how he or she succeeded at tasks the position in question requires.

Learning more about each of those four elements will help interviewers determine how the job candidate will fit in with the company.