Streamline Your Hiring Process

The hiring process is too often time-consuming and expensive. As a manager, how can you streamline yours — and improve the quality of your hiring decisions?

• Reduce the number of interviewers in your process. If you have more than four or five interviewers, the costs associated with the additional complexity in your process have most likely exceeded the benefits.
• Shift away from consensus-driven decision making. Be explicit about who gets to make the final call on each hiring decision and who may have veto power.
• Ask interviewers to use numerical ratings when evaluating candidates. Doing so helps hiring committees focus on the holistic view rather than on one-off negative comments. And having interviewers submit their ratings before hearing input from colleagues will reduce the chance of groupthink.