How to Hire Early Career Employees
With the squeeze still on the employment market, many companies are considering hiring early-career employees – but how do you select and interview them?
As we head into the end of the calendar year, we’re starting to think about the roles we need in the business next year and how we will recruit for them. Despite the slowdown in the economy, It’s still really difficult to find good people in the market. Plus, a lot of businesses need to cut costs.
Recently, we’ve been talking with clients about roles that traditionally we would have filled with experienced people. And we’ve looked at hiring someone instead who is earlier in their career – perhaps a student or a graduate – and training them up to fill the shoes of a more experienced person.
Benefits of Early Career Hires
There are several benefits to this. Firstly, it allows you to take some tasks off the plate of your more experienced people, which is a great retention strategy. Secondly, you can train someone who will hopefully stay with you for longer because they’re being continually developed. Thirdly, you’re not paying the same rate as you would if you brought in someone with a great deal of prior experience.
‘it allows you to take some tasks off the plate of your more experienced people, which is a great retention strategy’
How to Hire Early-Career People
So, let’s look at how you hire early career professional roles and the recruitment process that goes with that because you need to take quite a different approach if you want to implement this strategy.
Typically, there’s a heavy focus on skills and experience in recruitment. Usually, it’s only once someone ticks the skills and experience box that you start to look at behaviours and culture. For a recap, check out our conversation with Ed Greenwood, Challenging “Culture Fit” in Hiring, where we discuss the idea of culture fit when hiring.
If you’re looking for early-career people with very limited skills and experience, how do you undertake a fair recruitment process that mitigates as much bias as possible? At AmplifyHR, we have experience hiring students for part-time roles within our business, so I can share some tips on making it work.
Book a Chat
My first tip is to ask them to book a chat. At AmplifyHR, we send each applicant a note saying, ‘Here’s a link to book a 15-minute chat with one of the team so we can understand why you’re applying and interested in the role’.
Now, you might think that’s a big time investment. But actually, a lot of people indiscriminately apply for every position available. And when we push for a chat with them, they don’t respond.
‘a lot of people indiscriminately apply for every position available’
It means that you’re immediately weeding out the people who didn’t know what the job was about and were simply applying for everything.
Scope them Out
Some applicants will respond to your invitation to chat. In that conversation, you can dig into why they applied for the role and what interests them.
This is important because you want to ensure their needs align with what you can provide. If I was chatting with an applicant for a role at AmplifyHR, and they said, ‘I love spreadsheets. I love to spend all day calculating figures and numbers.’ Well, that won’t work in my business; they would be better off applying for a role at an accounting firm.
It enables you to better match the role you can provide with the people who are a good fit. It also enables you to assess other important components, such as how they present themselves on the phone, and if they’re polite and punctual.
On a Roll
Book chats with applicants on a rolling basis. You should never advertise a role if you don’t have time every day to look at applications coming in. This is important because it enables you to be responsive to the volume of applications. For example, you may have ten people booked in for a phone call after three days. You can then stop the ad – you have enough applicants for now.
‘You should never advertise a role if you don’t have time every day to look at applications coming in’
However, if you leave it for two weeks, far too many people may be booked in for chats. You can communicate in the ad that you’ll be conducting selections on a rolling basis, so get your application in fast.
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Interviews
Once you’ve had a chat on the phone, you can bring your shortlist applicants in for an interview. But then how do you assess skills and experience? This is difficult with early career professionals.
I begin with a conversation with applicants, covering general topics such as:
In-Tray Exercise
Next, I give them an in-tray exercise. This exercise takes about 15 or 20 minutes. I give the applicant a list of typical tasks that would be part of their role and ask them to arrange them in order of importance. They don’t need to know how to complete the task, but they need to understand which things are important and why they should be prioritised.
For example, one of their tasks might refer to payroll. They need to understand that if the task impacts someone’s pay, even though it might seem like a really small administrative task, it needs to be made a priority.
The point of this exercise is that it enables you to have a conversation with the applicant about why they ordered their list the way they did. Generally, there’s no right or wrong answer, but it allows you to understand the logic and processes they used to get there.
Background
After this, we have a chat about their background. I ask them about their:
Whole Brain Thinking Cards
I like to use whole brain thinking cards for the next activity. These are cards that we typically use in our workshops. They each have one word, covering about 60 different areas of how you might describe yourself. For example:
I ask the applicant to choose three cards that sound like them and one card that doesn’t and to explain why. And I do the same. It’s a bit of a get-to-know-you exercise.
Do-Over
And then, at the end, I always give people the opportunity for a do-over. I tell them this at the start to take the pressure off. I say, ‘If you think that in going through this process today, you haven’t put your best self forward, then at the end, I’ll ask you if you want do-over of anything. You get one do-over.’
Then, at the end, I ask, how do you think you went today? Did you feel like you put forward everything you wanted to put forward? And I also provide at least one piece of feedback. For example, ‘I think you presented well’, or ‘I think that your answer to this particular question was very good’. And then I ask if they’d like a do-over of anything.
I don’t necessarily give experienced people a do-over, unless there are extenuating circumstances because they should be experienced at interviewing.
Early Career Selections
So that’s my process for selecting early-career people. This process isn’t going to work with highly experienced people because you need to understand more about their skills and experience.
But for early career hires, it’s a way to
Have your say
Are there any elements you can use to hire early career stage roles next year? We’d love your feedback on this series, just head on over to Amplify HR or connect with Karen on LinkedIn.