PPB December

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DECEMBER 2014 • PPB • 39
industry-specific LinkedIn groups that
have free job boards. Bottom line:
research all of your job board options
and be strategic about where you post
your position.
3.Consider outsourcing the legwork.
If you have an idea of where you might
source your talent but are uncomfortable
cold-calling them yourself, consider hir-
ing someone such as a friend, an intern or
consultant to make those calls for you. All
your headhunter-for-hire will require is a
list of potential candidates’ phone num-
bers, a clear understanding of what you’re
looking for and a professional manner.
4.Structure your screening. At
Affinity HR, we look at every contact
with a candidate as part of the screening
process, including how responsive the
candidate is in following up and how
well written his or her e-mail is. If it
takes a long time for your candidates to
respond or if their cover letter is poorly
written, take that into consideration
when screening them.
5. Test, test, test. From the National
Football League to Xerox, organizations
of every size and across every industry are
adding behavioral testing as part of the
recruitment process. The reason behind
this surge in testing is simple—more
often than not, employees fail not because
of aptitude but because of attitude. We
recommend that behavioral testing
account for one-third of your hiring deci-
sion, with the other two-thirds being the
candidate’s experience and his or her
interview performance, respectively.
6.Use behavioral interview ques-
tions. When you find yourself face-to-
face with your candidate, how you ask
your questions can be as impactful as
what you ask. We recommend you ask
behavioral questions because the best pre-
dictor of how the candidate will perform
in the future is how they have performed
in the past. Behavioral interview ques-
tions focus on what the candidate has
done in previous jobs or situations. Start
your questions with something such as:
“Tell me about a time when …”
7.Use group interviews. We are strong
proponents of group interviews that
include at least two interviewers in each
session. By using group interviews, every-
one is able to listen, observe, think and
talk. And unlike a typical interview
process where the candidate is shuttled
from one office to another for one-on-one
interviews, group sessions give everyone
on the interview team the opportunity to
observe the same response and reaction.
8. Structure your questions in
advance. When using a group interview
format, it’s best to decide in advance who
will ask what questions. If one person is
going to ask operational questions, some-
one else can ask about customer service
and yet another can focus on sales. Once
you decide on the areas of inquiry, ask
your questions in a behavioral interview
style (see tip No. 6) and try to ask the
same question of every candidate so that
you can compare apples to apples.
9. Avoid bias. When evaluating your candi-
dates, it is natural to pick someone because
they are likeable or shared many things in
common with you. It is also natural to dis-
favor a candidate because they don’t share
your personal preferences or remind you of
someone you dislike. These prejudices are
natural, but they can be detrimental to
finding a qualified candidate. Our best
advice: Stick to your job description and
evaluate your candidates only on what is
contained in the description.
10. If you’re not excited, don’t hire.
If you don’t like your pool of candidates,
start over. Too often we see hiring man-
agers select the best candidate in a pool
of unqualified candidates simply because
they are overly anxious to get a warm
body to fill a position.
Continued From Previous Page
offer smoking cessation pro-
grams to existing employees.
Q. We pay our temporary help
on a piece-rate basis. We calcu-
late the amount of work they
should be able to process in a
one-hour period and pay them
the equivalent of minimum
wage for that work. If the
employee performs less than
the required work, is it okay to
pay them less than the mini-
mum wage for that work?
No, for most non-exempt
positions you must ensure that
the employee is earning mini-
mum wage. In addition, you
also need to make sure the
employee is paid time-and-a-half
for all time worked over 40
hours in a work week.
Therefore, you will need to
keep track of the employees’
time and ensure that they don’t
earn less than the minimum
wage in your state.
Q. We have a salaried, exempt
employee who has been com-
ing in late and leaving early.
Can we dock her pay for the
hours she has missed?
No. Exempt employees are
exempt from the Fair Labor
Standards Act (FLSA) and
therefore are not paid by the
hour but are paid based on the
annual salary to which you have
agreed. As a result, you cannot
dock pay except in limited
instances (such as full work
weeks in which the employee
didn’t work or full workdays
when the employee was out
sick, etc.). Partial-day deduc-
tions for a couple of hours
within a workday, are not
allowed.
Instead, you should treat her
tardiness and early absences as
part of a disciplinary action,
subject to your progressive dis-
cipline practices.
Claudia St. John, SPHR, is
president of Affinity HR Group,
LLC, PPAI’s affiliated human
resources partner. Affinity HR
Group specializes in providing
human resources assistance to
associations such as PPAI and
their member companies.
.
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