Put the Candidate to Work

According to PayScale, the average tenure for employees of Mass Mutual Insurance Company is only nine months. For companies like Amazon, AFLAC and Google, it’s just about a year. Companies spend a lot of time and money recruiting, interviewing and selecting employees. It can cost up to two and a half times an annual salary just to complete the interview and recruiting process for an upper-level management team member. And in some companies, the process is repeated every year.

Job-hopping used to be a career-killer. No one wanted to hire someone who didn’t have at least five years at his or her last job. It’s difficult to find an applicant without a string of jobs, internships or volunteer positions. Many have breaks in employment—another career killer. 

Conducting better, more thorough job interviews should weed out the poor choices and bring the best to the front. With the high turnover rates, could the standard interview process be the problem? An Inc.com article, “How to Stop Relying On The Job Interview,” suggests just that. Employers are used to the process, and so are applicants. Career consultants coach applicants how to answer questions, how to dress and make the all-important first impression. Maybe it’s time to change up the game.

Employers have long used temporary agencies to “try out” staff before making a hiring decision. The 500 hours or three months preliminary period is long enough to see whether a temporary employee can do the job and fit in with the team and company culture. If not, they can be replaced with a phone call, no financial loss or regrets. 

Andy Dunn, CEO of Bonobos, uses the same process to find the best candidates without having to pay the inflated rates of an employment agency. He puts candidates to work, so to speak. It’s part of the interview process. Instead of a candidate telling you he has wonderful customer service skills and is a “people person” he puts them in the call center or on the sales floor and observes them actually dealing with real customers. Not for just a day, but for a week. Anyone can hold on to a pleasant demeanor for a day, but after a few days the true person will come out. Also, instead of one or two interviewers observing a candidate, the “working” candidate has a variety of observers over the course of a week. They can all give a different perspective on his or her performance.

This doesn’t only work for staff positions, but for executive and management positions as well. Give a management candidate a tough, real-life situation or project, an office, phone and laptop and watch him work. If the person wants the job badly enough, and has the time, it can be a win-win for both.

Any candidate worth her salt comes with a list of stellar references. Instead of those hand-picked fans, go one level up or down. Find someone at the company who was a peer or staff member. You know the references listed will have nice things to say. You just might find someone down the list who can give a more balanced picture.

Finding the best candidate who might stick around awhile takes some creativity and risk. These unusual interview tactics just might pay off in the long run.

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