Over the past several years I’ve spoken with a lot of clubs that have great interview processes. Often, these processes take a long period of time — consisting of several days. However, after the multitude of phone interviews and e-mail questions have been accomplished, what steps do you take, once the prospect is in your club, to ensure they are a great hire?
In the past couple of years we have strived to make the hiring process more full proof. They no longer sit in front of our publisher, and myself, but they now must face the entire team. Our tweak of the system has even changed in the past several months to use a system I witnessed from the law firm I worked at in college.
For almost four years, I watched new associates and recent law graduates enter into the firm I worked at, and run the gauntlet, so to say. As each prospect came in for the interview, they would begin with the associates. The associates would interview them on their privately designed questions. Each associate interviewed the prospect privately.
Next, the prospect would continue through the gauntlet with the partners. Each partner would interview the prospect, just as the associates had, using their own developed questions. Around midday, the firm would cater lunch where the prospect, the associates and the partners would meet in a conference room to share a meal. They would discuss everything from sports to house buying, to experiences in law school.
This process was long and arduous for the prospect, but just like college, shows an employer that a person can stay focused for years on end; a long day of interviews can do the same. At Club Solutions, we now follow the same technique. We will bring in a prospect and they will meet, individually, with each of our staff members. Around midday, we all go out together and grab lunch. This allows us to see how a person may act in a social setting. It also allows us to learn more about the person from a personal side.
Once we return from lunch, we all meet in our conference/war room to further interview the prospect. This allows us to see what they’d be like in a team setting, how they react to multiple questions, and see how we, as a small staff, dissect new ideas.
Is this process long and arduous? Sure. But, when we all meet to discuss the prospect, everyone can bring individual perceptions of the person to the table. It allows everyone to discover what they might desire, individually, from the new position. Because, yes, a company has an overall need for a position, but that individual must work with the team, and each individual leans on different team members for different tasks.
It is our belief that this system alleviates the vast majority of the questions you might have for a prospect. Though it does break up the day for everyone on the staff, it essentially allows everyone to be part of the process, providing more of a feeling of ownership for everyone in the company.
Tyler Montgomery is the Editor of Club Solutions Magazine. Contact him at tyler@clubsolutionsmagazine.com
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Rachel Zabonick-Chonko is the editor-in-chief of Club Solutions Magazine. She can be reached at rachel@peakemedia.com.
