Elevating University Hiring Practices

Addressing Common Pitfalls in the Selection and Hiring Process

The landscape of higher education is continually evolving, and hiring the right people is one of the key opportunities to build a team or department that can help achieve strategic goals. Unfortunately, there is no shortcut to a well-thought-out approach. The time invested to develop an intentional approach to hiring will pay off by helping you mitigate bias, provide a great candidate experience, and ultimately result in a successful hire. Consider the strategies:

• Revisiting and Revising Role Requirements

  A common pitfall in hiring is recycling outdated job descriptions. These relics often fail to capture the evolving demands of the role and can result in hiring someone who fits yesterday’s needs rather than tomorrow’s. Begin by evaluating what the role requires. What work needs to get done now and in the future? What skills do you already have on your team? For example, a department head might realize that, in addition to traditional academic qualifications, the new faculty member needs to be adept in online teaching technologies or collaborative research.

• Valuing Competency Over Credentials 

  In the academic world, it’s easy to get caught up in the prestige of degrees and institutions. However, focusing solely on these credentials can overshadow the practical skills, knowledge, and abilities (SKAs) that are essential for the job. By prioritizing SKAs, you can tap into a broader and more diverse talent pool. When evaluating candidates, consider how their unique skills and perspectives could benefit the department. Look for how you can enhance and complement your team's existing skill sets, not just replicate them.

• Structured Approaches for Fair Assessments

  Rushed decisions, often based on gut feelings, are another major challenge. These decisions can be influenced by unconscious biases and lead to suboptimal hires. Forming a diverse hiring team or selection committee is a vital step in counteracting this tendency. A well-rounded committee brings varied perspectives, which helps mitigate individual biases. It is also crucial that every member of the hiring team sees the job description and agrees on the selection criteria before interviewing candidates. This will help make the later debriefs and decision-making easier.

• Assess What Matters Most with Behavioral Interview Questions

  While structured interviews can help with consistency, asking the right questions can help assess competencies that matter for a candidate's success on the job. What competencies matter most for this role? How do I assess them accurately? Replacing hypothetical questions with behavioral-based ones is a proven approach to increase the accuracy of candidate assessment.

Assessing candidate skills accurately can not only help select the best person for the role but also inform future onboarding and development needs for that employee.

Take Action Now to Reflect on and Revise Your Hiring Practices

This article covered just a few core practices to improve your hiring process. There is more nuance to all of them as well as tools and resources you can use to support you in this work. Whether you are hiring now, looking to hire in the future, or evaluating skill sets on your current team, there are steps you can take to learn more by reflecting on the following questions:

• Are the job descriptions on your team up to date? 
• Are the right qualities in candidates prioritized?
• Is the selection process designed to be as fair and objective as possible? 
• Do you know what tools and support exist?