Hiring the Best
As a Human Resources professional, your role in ensuring an effective selection process for your unit is vital. University expectations are to hire the best qualified candidates and to promote inclusive hiring. To accommodate the highly decentralized nature of the University, you have a high degree of autonomy in the hiring process and thus more accountability.
It is critical to ensure you are supporting hiring practices that fulfill an institutional need, not simply an open position within your unit. Therefore, you must be aware of the relationship your position has to others outside of your unit and hire individuals who bring a diversification of skills, traits, talents and abilities that enhance the University community.
The cost of a poor hire can be measured by turnover, training time, loss of productivity and employee dissatisfaction along with the cost of grievances and legal expenses resulting from negligent hiring.
Some tips on how to implement fair and equitable hiring practices include:
- Give yourself extra recruitment time;
- Utilize a variety of recruitment resources;
- Encourage diverse people to apply;
- Provide reasonable accommodation to those who are handicapped;
- Remove bias from interviewing methods;
- Keep inquiries and questions job-related;
- Be consistent with all candidates.
The University of Michigan's "eRecruit" system offers many tools to assist you in ensuring an effective process, including information on posting a position, interviewing, making an offer and orienting the new employee.
Resources for an effective recruitment event (PDF)
