Confused, frustrated, mislead. If candidates are leaving an interview with these emotions, you’re doing something wrong.

When a candidate walks out of an interview feeling they were more prepared than the hiring manager, that’s a bad thing, and it usually means that the organization doesn’t understand structured hiring 101:

• Define the Job
• Create Candidate Scorecard
• Market the Opening
• Plan the Interviews
• Select Candidate
• Make an Offer

We aren’t solving for the square root of negative one here, these simple steps are fundamental to finding great talent, on time and on budget. The consequences of leaving these basics unheeded are wasted resources, loss of talent, and ultimately, negative employer brand.

Here’s what to tell your team:

“Structured hiring” is a type of selection process that seeks to mitigate bias, subjective error, and confusion through codifying the expectations of the team for each other and the candidates. This ensures alignment between the organization’s business objectives, strategic direction, and culture. In other words, everyone will be on the same page.

…And why is it so important?

The bottom line. In a recent survey, STEM careers found that superior performers in an organization have 40 to 100 percent more economic impact on company performance than average employees. Therefore, an organization’s success can hinge on the degree of the talent within it, which makes your ability to find that talent all the more important.

Steps to Structured Hiring Explained

1. Define the Job – Conduct a job analysis by investigating the role’s tasks, duties, and responsibilities. Talk to the people who will work closely with this future team member and people who have done this job before!
2. Create Candidate Scorecard – Develop selection criteria in a scorecard-style to use during interviews, based on the information obtained within the job analysis. Then choose a method of assessing each criterion during the recruitment and selection process. It is important that these items be quantified to effectively measure each candidates level within each requirement.
3. Market the Opening – Plan the advertising and marketing strategy to broadcast the open position on job boards, social media, trade publications, or you may bring in an outside firm for professional advice that can provide individualized support and professional insight.
4. Plan Interviews –  Structure your time with candidates with questions and exercises that are the same for each. Weight the activities and determine benchmark responses in order to evaluate everyone fairly. 
5. Select Candidate – Form a committee of stakeholders to select the best candidate for the role based on all previously ascertained information and score each accordingly. Be cognizant of the employment laws of your region and ensure selection decision is not based on any form of bias or discrimination. This is where the weighted selection criteria scorecard comes in very handy.
6. Offer – Extend your offer to candidate verbally and then confirm in writing.

Pro tip: Try just implementing just two steps at first. Simply defining the job and structuring the interview can boost candidate experience and decrease bias enormously!