How you hire matters because the foundation of your business is built on a good team of employees, finding the right fit for each position is a crucial step in ensuring the success of your organization. People analytics tools have helped companies recruit for and fill positions, as well as analyze the health of their staffing and employee roster. Are the right people in the right roles? Do we have enough employees to cover labor and production needs? People analytics can help answer these questions and enable businesses to make educated practical decisions.
When people analytics are used to recruit candidates – such as ATS systems and AI that scans resumes for keywords, experiences, and more and gets them in front of the right HR personnel – the next step is to take candidates and measure them and their experience and skill set against a hiring rubric. A hiring rubric, also known as a hiring decision matrix, helps management understand if the candidates are a good fit for that specific position. It also gives them a ranking system to use consistently for all candidates and ensure that they are measuring each applicant for the same criteria.
All questions contained in the hiring template must be objective and unbiased. While there might be a different hiring decision matrix for different positions, here are some examples of interview scorecard questions and what they can help you discover.
- Some questions will be yes or no: if the applicant arrived on time if they have the relevant and required certifications or education. This is information that may not apply to every position but should help you weed out candidates early in the process.
- Questions about work culture and work style: It’s important to be specific and not too generic when really trying to find a culture fit. For instance, “How do you work best?” is less helpful than asking, “What describes you better: making a decision after asking for input from friends and coworkers, or making a decision based on your experience?”
- Questions about proficiencies: People analytics recruiting software may have flagged a resume because it had the keyword “QuickBooks” but using a hiring template gives you the ability to track expertise and weight these as factors in your decisions.
- Behavioral based questions: It is always important to get a feel for how people accept challenges, problem solve and work through disagreements, and behavioral based questions are some of the best ways to establish that. “Tell me about a time that you disagreed with a supervisor. How did you handle it?” is a great example, and their “score” on this question is based on how closely their answer aligns with what you want to see at your business.
- Project descriptions: Many jobs require certain skills or specific past experiences. Asking candidates to describe the types of projects they have worked on gives you the ability to assess and rank how likely that experience will translate to the position you are hiring for.
Each question should have a “weight” attached to it – for instance, questions about cultural fit might rank lower in importance than questions about projects and experience, depending on the business or position. An overall score of a hiring decision matrix is ultimately what helps you understand what candidates deserve to move forward.
No matter what hiring decision matrix template you end up using to fill positions, as a screening tool it’s invaluable to helping businesses accurately and fairly evaluate candidates. The hiring decision matrix can be handed off to the department manager or leadership once it’s completed, giving them a measurable template of information forever applicant. It can also help weed people out earlier in the process by establishing what’s crucial for a candidate to possess and ranking them accordingly.
When people analytics tools and hiring matrix templates work together, you can count on making hiring decisions that are based on relevant data. When you give your hiring managers the right tools, they can bring the best people in to grow your business.
