by Nicole Degi
When you are hiring new talent, it’s important to get your team on the same page to create alignment within the organization. When you hire for alignment, it creates a culture of cohesiveness that aligns with your company’s mission and values. When hiring employees that share common passions and purpose you will retain talent and increase performance.
Tips for hiring for alignment:
1. Establish a unified hiring process.
When looking at the hiring process that your organization has, I would start by keeping it consistent amongst the team. Start by assessing the needs of the role, creating a job description, and set of qualifications for each role, identifying a timeline for the process, and create interview guides and questions based on the role and culture fit for your team.
2. Set clear expectations.
Prior to starting the interview process, outline the expectations for the hiring committee and make sure everyone is on the same page. If this role is a back fill, make sure the team understands why. If this is a new role explain the needs for the new role and how this person will fit into the organization. Identify any areas for improvement if this is backfilled and key characteristics you are looking for from a soft and hard skill perspective in the ideal candidate. Really dive into what behaviors this person needs to be successful in this role years down the road. For example, do they need to be independent or collaborative? From there, define roles and responsibilities for each member interviewing the candidates and ensure everyone is aware of the criteria and timeline.
3. Use scorecards.
Scorecards are a great way to ensure consistency and alignment amongst the hiring team and they take the bias out of the hiring process. Scorecards provide a framework for evaluating candidates and can help to ensure that all members of the hiring committee are on the same page. For consistency, match your scorecard to the job description. Within the scorecard model, you can add value alignment-based interview questions.
4. Utilize candidate benchmarking.
Benchmarking provides a way to compare different candidates based on their qualifications, experience, and skills. This can help ensure that all members of the hiring committee make informed decisions about each candidate and that they have a streamlined, efficient, and effective hiring process. Having a hiring benchmark will look different for every organization and it will depend on your needs and culture. As a search firm, we use Predictive Index to get alignment amongst stakeholders on what is needed for the role behaviorally and cognitively.
W Talent Solutions can help your team align and hire the right candidate. Reach out to us here.
