The Wrong Person Is In Charge Of Hiring: That’s Why Your Process Stinks
Hiring fails because the hiring manager is in charge, argues The Staffing Advisor. Twenty different hiring managers = twenty variations on the hiring process. Ouch.
To most Hiring Managers, the tasks involved in hiring seem unproductive, uncomfortable, or vaguely legally threatening—like writing a job description, recruiting, selecting people to interview, figuring out what interview questions you can ask, writing up notes from the interview, checking references, and making the job offer. It feels like one mis-step and BOOM you are in litigation.
So you bring in your HR person, but somehow the HR person is just the…shall we say, facilitator. The HR person says “Okay, here’s what you need to do first: write a job description.” Then the HR person runs an ad and submits a stack of resumes to the hiring manager. It’s a mess.
So…
If you want your hiring to work, reverse the roles…the Hiring Manager does not manage the hiring schedule and spends only the minimum time necessary to interview people and make hiring decisions—no more writing job descriptions, reviewing resumes, scheduling interviews, or any administrivia involved with the hiring process —that is left to the experts. (If your Hiring Managers only make a few hires per year, it’s simply not practical to try to train them all to become hiring process experts).
Now, from a jobseeker perspective, this is frustrating, because we’re always trying to “bypass HR” and so on. However, the up side could be fewer delays and more respect/callbacks from companies if processes become standardized and streamlined.
Any suggestions from either side of the table?
Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our 
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