7 Principles of Hiring That Will Transform Your Hiring Success
You’ve been trying to hire top-quality candidates for biostatistician jobs, but without success. One of the reasons is that it’s a competitive field. The best candidates may have three or more companies chasing them. Therefore, the odds of hiring your preferred candidates are probably below 50%.
Each failed hire leads to more time, effort, and expense needed in your hiring process. This isn’t good for team morale, and it’s not good for your organization’s effectiveness and efficiency. Can you improve your hiring process, to increase the probability of identifying top-quality candidates and ensuring they are more likely to accept offers for biostatistician jobs?
We think you can, by following these seven principles of hiring.
1. Make Hiring a Continuous Process
Too many companies approach hiring as if it is a single task, only required when a role has become vacant. This is a mistake.
Here at SimulStat, for example, we are continuously reaching out to and engaging with talented prospective candidates and potential employees. This means that we create a funnel of likely candidates with whom we can connect – because we remain connected – when the need arises. This reduces time to hire, improves our quality of choice, and ensures consistency.
2. Widen Your Net Innovatively and Intelligently
If you cast a wider net, you will attract more candidates. It’s a statistical guarantee. However, this doesn’t mean they will be of the quality you desire. Therefore, you must cast your net intelligently. There are several ways to do this, especially with the reach offered by the internet and social media such as LinkedIn.
One example might be to provide an online challenge that tests the competence of those who take up that challenge. Those who pass this test may be offered another, stiffer examination. Then another test, a little more difficult still.
This is a highly effective way of uncovering the talent you need and bringing them down the hiring funnel. Each test will remove lesser adept candidates. Eventually, you will be left with a list of candidates you may wish to invite for interview.
Providing your approach is correctly planned, the efficiency is clear. Less time expended and more accuracy in identifying potential candidates.
You will have fewer candidates to interview and those candidates will be more likely to accept an offer, because you have already started to engage them.
3. Be Real in Your Testing
A reason that companies make offers to the wrong candidates is that they ask the wrong questions at interview. The experience and knowledge they test has little bearing on the work they will be doing. Here’s how you should set out for interviewing effectively:
- First, understand the exact qualities for which you are hiring
- Know what the end-product is that you expect hires to produce
- Understand what your hire will be doing, and how they will be expected to do it
- Then, devise suitable tests that assess all the above
When preparing tests, ensure the data needed is available and know what type of solution you expect. Design the test to closely replicate working conditions – you want to know that they will succeed in their day-to-day environment.
4. Remove Interview Bias
Unconscious bias kills quality candidates. Yet we all possess our biases. The first impression you have of a candidate is an impression that is hard for the candidate to overcome – no matter how good they are.
To battle your biases, design a process that first tests for technical skills before assessing the more subjective skills required (such as creativity, communication, and problem solving). These subjective assessments are where unconscious bias is most likely to infiltrate your decision making. To help eliminate this, put the next tip into action.
5. Involve Your Team in Candidate Assessment
Get your team involved in the hiring of new biostatisticians early, and then engage them in the process throughout:
- Ask for their help in designing tests – who knows better the constraints your new hire will work within?
- Ensure that your team help in defining the role, its objectives, and the qualities needed from the new hire.
- Introduce potential hires to your team, and listen to their feedback with regards to personality and cultural fit.
- Finally, ask for input from others with whom the new hire and your team collaborate and work with – engineers, product managers, etc.
This approach should ensure that your hire should have the technical ability needed and will quickly fit in with your team, the wider organization, and your goals.
6. Move Fast with a Streamlined Hiring Process
The demand for biostatisticians is growing, and the best may receive several offers simultaneously. It is crucial that you move candidates through your hiring process fast. You must also keep them informed of progress and next steps as you do – and make certain that your timetable doesn’t slip.
7. Sell the Candidate on the Role and Your Company
Finally, at every stage of your hiring process, it is critical that you sell the role and your company. Remember, they are testing you out as much as you are testing them:
- Make sure that you don’t require candidates to repeat hiring steps or answer the same questions at two or more interviews
- Provide feedback swiftly after interviews
- Allow them to meet with current employees and discover why they enjoy their work
- Let them experience the type of work they will be expected to do in assessments and tests you ask them to take
- Explain your compensation package, and make an offer that is competitive and enticing
For help to fill your biostatistician jobs quickly, and with the most talented candidates available, contact SimulStat today.