Hiring Teams
Laurie King
Most of us have a committee or team that supports hiring, but do those hiring teams also feel responsible for the success of those hired once they come on board? They should. As their leader, you can support the team in creating onboarding and mentoring plans and holding your hiring team accountable for the success of your new hires.
As you are going through the selection and placement process, your team has learned a great deal about the skills, knowledge, competencies, and experiences of each candidate. Often, even if you hire the very best candidate, there can be areas of concern. Sometimes you decide to hire someone who has the right attitude and passion, but who needs a great deal of support. In any case, one of the roles of the hiring committee should be to use their knowledge of the candidate to create an onboarding and mentoring support plan for the recommended candidate.
When you think of what will support this candidate’s success, what individualized support would this candidate need? Does she need to get to know your evaluation tool? Should she read the book that your school did a book study on last year? If you had to select two on-site informal mentors for this person, who would be a good choice to support with teaching content and who would be a good choice for general school or classroom management concerns? What specifically would you want the mentors to accomplish with this new hire? If there is anything that concerned the team within the interview process, there should be a plan to address the concern proactively so that the candidate feels supported in meeting your high expectations.
If the new hire ends up not showing the growth that you had expected, then bring the general concern back to the hiring committee. What would help the process or the system to avoid hiring and onboarding someone who was not successful? How would our top performers have performed in our hiring and selection process? How can we recruit to ensure we are getting these types of candidates?
Ensuring that your hiring committee feels responsible about the candidate’s success once hired creates a cycle of improvement that continuously improves the alignment among selection, placement, and onboarding practices so that your school hires and retains top talent.