After working as a product manager in the hiring space I could not help but pick up some Human Resources hiring best practices. Most of these items are common sense. If a company you interview with does not employ them, it is a likely sign of internal disorganization and poor communication skills.
- Auto responses to candidate applications are fine. Actually, they are great because they validate the candidate’s submission and give the hiring manager time to complete an initial resume screen.
- Auto rejection letters are fine if an initial resume screen determines a candidate is not qualified.
- Auto rejection letters are not OK when the HR team has had any form of direct communication with a candidate e.g. email, phone screen, in person interview. Auto rejection letters at this stage demean the candidate and hurt the company brand image within its industry.
- Status reports are important. Candidates can and should know that they are a strong possibility for a position, that they are not a fit, or that other candidates are still being interviewed. It takes very little effort to keep a candidate in the loop. Ignoring this simple step is an indicator of ill placed priorities and a tendency towards internal job self-preservation.
- If the HR team is using a hiring tool, verify the built in communication system. It’s difficult to build communications components that operate as expected. Try scheduling in-person interviews with a phone call; then confirm the appointment with the hiring tool’s communication system.
- Updating the job description? Make sure the update propagates to all the sites it’s posted on. Even though the hiring tool sends the job to Simply Hired, Indeed, Monster, Craigslist, Oodle, and more, it must be manually edited in many places like Dice, Linked-in, Krop, and in some cases, the hiring company’s company’s website.
- Job descriptions are marketing tools. Hiring organizations want great candidates, but great candidates skip posts with grammatical, spelling, and other general communication errors.
- Job descriptions are pubic company status statements. If a company is hiring 3 mobile engineers, they must be building a mobile application. If another firm is hiring a project manager who knows HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript, who also knows how to implement the MVC architecture, but can wireframe, build production ready designs, knows Project, Visio, Excel, can build product and marketing requirement documents and has a PMP, they must have lost a key developer, a designer, and a product manager, but don’t have the resources to replace them all.
- If candidates are allowed to upload a resume, they should not be required to also re-enter it just so the hiring tool can eliminate them more efficiently. Either the candidate should be required to enter it from the start, or the company should get a better hiring tool.
Ultimately, it’s important for companies and candidates to realize that the hiring process is not about either one individually. Companies expose their brand and offer strategy hints with job listings. Candidates expose personal information in an emotionally stressful way. Hiring the right way is as easy as clear, appropriate, and timely communication. It is a relationship after all.
This list will continue evolving. If you have your own thoughts please feel free to add them in the notes!
