Episode 009: The Post Mortem

Today we're getting morbid. We're talking about failures in recruiting and we're going to walk through one of the most important steps of the recruiting process: The Post-Mortem.

Over 20 years in the trenches of recruiting, I've interviewed somewhere between 11,000 and 15,000 people. So believe me when I tell you, failures happen, and in order to learn from them, we need to understand what went wrong, and takes steps to ensure those mistakes are not repeated.

On today's episode of The Rebellious Recruiter with Daava Mills, we're doing a dive deep into the world of process improvement, and how to look at it from a recruiting angle.

Daava's Rebellious Recruiting Notes:

• In all my years of recruiting, I can only recall one time that a bad hire was made and through these post mortem steps couldn't find a mistake during the hiring process.

• Sometimes, you can do everything right, and still have a bad hire or an off-culture fit.

• A true recruiter will take the time to understand nuance, and nuance is where the postmortem starts.

• A very common mistake is bad hires happen when strong assumptions are made by the decision makers, and then they base an entire hiring decision on one really good answer. This is called the Halo Effect.

• Actual verifiable answers from a candidate are key, not the assumptions you make from the answer.

Here are my steps for a Post Mortem:

1. Did the recruiter who initially screened the resume know what they were looking for?
2. Does the recruiter understand the soft skills required for the department?
3. Can the recruiter talk effectively about the micro-culture of the department?
4. Did the recruiter also do a phone screen and did they take solid notes?
5. Was the micro-culture of the department discussed?
6. Did the candidate have questions? If so, what were they?
7. Were the challenges the department is facing discussed openly and honestly?
8. Did the advertisement effectively call out the top five skills required for the position?
9. Did the job description require a realistic amount of experience (not too much)?
10. Did the hiring manager read the initial phone screen notes that the recruiter captured?
11. Did the manager ask follow-up questions from the phone screen to get clarity or did they repeat the same questions, and thereby got the same answers?
12. During the interview did a manager get swayed by experience that is useable, but not relevant to the immediate needs?
13. Were the top five skills discussed in detail, or was an entire skill signed off on with only one good story?
14. Did you do references? (Please note, I'm reference ambivalent)
15. If references were done, did their job title and job duties line up with what is on the resume?
16. Did you ask the reference about their strengths and areas for learning?
17. Rinse and repeat these steps until you've looked at each piece.

As always, you can email me at daava@millsgroupllc.com with your thoughts or questions. I may use your subject matter in upcoming shows.

Episode Links:

The Mills Group

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