Winning Workplaces

With the combination of a recession and ever more technological tools to help HR folks and recruiters select the best candidate for an open position, it may be tempting to treat the inevitable in-person employee interview almost as a formality. If someone looks great on paper and they have the collegial/communication chops to back it up, they're a fit, right?

Not so fast, say many of the small organizations we've highlighted as having both great workplace team building and sound businesses. One of the ways these firms are a differentiator in the marketplace is their patient, measured approach to hiring.

Why are they more like the turtle than the hare in this regard? As 2006 Best Boss Mike Faith put it when we wrote a Success Story on his company, Headsets.com, "Each employee is really a key hire for us." Virtually all of our honored small firms feel the same way because they've worked hard to create highly specialized workplace cultures and they don't want a wrench to be thrown into the machinery, so to speak.

With that in mind, here are some articles on our site that will give you a sense of how you might slow down and reevaluate your processes to make better hiring decisions (meaning getting employees who are more motivated and productive and who stay longer):

Headsets.com Success Story mentioned above
Takeaway: All candidates go through 7-8 interviews

Profile of 2008 Top Small Workplaces Finalist Menlo Innovations
Takeaway: "extreme interviewing" in which how the person acts in small group settings is evaluated

Success Story on 2007 Top Small Workplace Corporate Ink
Takeaway: CEO asks potential supervisors of new hires, "Would this person have your back?"

Success Story on 2008 Top Small Workplace ATA Engineering
Takeaway: New hires meet with all levels of employees including the president; all employees involved have an equal vote on whether the candidate is the best fit

Summary of "60 Ideas in 60 Minutes" session from our 2007 Top Small Workplaces Conference
Takeaway: Pair candidate with "someone who they might perceive to be a peon and see how they react to and respect that person"

Do you use any of these as part of your employee engagement activities? What additional "long horizon" hiring tips would you add?