Put together a complete hiring kit and onboarding plan for one role on your team.
Two documents for one role complete module 7: a hiring kit you use to pick the person, and a 30-day onboarding plan covering their first month. Allow about 40 minutes to write both, plus fifteen minutes to try two interview questions out on a colleague.
Pick the role first. A role you are hiring for right now is the best choice. Without a live vacancy, take the next role you expect to fill. If neither fits, use your own job and write the kit as though you were finding someone to replace you.
Your hiring kit is a single document with four sections, always in this order: role profile, interview questions, scoring guide, decision rule.
For the role profile, draw on Lesson 7.1, "Define the role before you write the ad". State the role title, who the person reports to and the reason the role exists. Add three outcomes you want from the first year, five must-have skills, and three skills the person can pick up on the job.
The interview questions build on Lesson 7.2. You need five, each tied to one of the must-have skills, set out in the sequence you plan to ask them.
Next is the scoring guide. Under each question, write down what a weak answer, an adequate answer and a strong answer would contain. A work sample, if you use one, sits in this section too, with a guide of its own.
The decision rule is the last section and the only one you write fresh for this exercise.
Your decision rule states in writing the scores and evidence a candidate must show before you offer them the job. Agree on it before any interview takes place. After meeting someone you warm to, or someone you take against, it is easy to raise or lower the bar for them, and having the rule fixed in advance prevents that.
Wei Ling (an invented hiring manager) marks every answer on a scale of 1 to 3, where 1 is weak, 2 adequate and 3 strong. Five questions give a possible total of 15. To get an offer under her rule, a candidate needs all three of these: a total of 11 or more; no 1 on either of the two questions linked to her most important must-have skills, client handling and spreadsheet accuracy; and a work sample rated adequate or better.
Her two final candidates are Aziz and Shu Fen. Aziz's scores are 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, adding up to 12, with no 1s and a strong work sample, so he passes all three conditions. Shu Fen's scores are 3, 3, 3, 1, 3, adding up to 13, a point ahead of Aziz. Her 1 came on the spreadsheet accuracy question, and her work sample missed both errors, so she does not meet the rule.
Shu Fen's case shows the limit of adding up scores. Someone can do well across several areas and still be missing the one skill the job depends on. You may use a different scale or different thresholds, since Wei Ling's are only an example. What counts is that yours are on paper before your first interview.
Lesson 7.3, "The first 30 days decide how fast someone contributes", gives the plan its three periods: before day one, week one, and weeks two to four.
Before day one, make a list of each account, tool and introduction the new hire will need. Next to every item, write who will arrange it and the date the request goes in. The buddy's name goes at the top.
Week one is planned day by day: whom the new hire meets and what they work on each day. Build in one small, real task that is finished by Friday, and schedule one-on-ones on day one and day five. Wei Ling (an invented example) planned Aziz's week this way. On Monday he is welcomed, his laptop and accounts are set up, he has lunch with Hui Min, his buddy, and he meets Wei Ling one-on-one at 4pm. On Tuesday morning he sits in on Arjun's client calls, and in the afternoon he meets the warehouse lead. On Wednesday he handles three routine client queries, and Hui Min checks his replies before they go out. Thursday is for meeting the finance contact and Daniel. On Friday he checks a week of report figures against the source data, which is his small real task, and ends with a one-on-one reviewing the week.
From week two to week four, give each week one goal and keep a weekly one-on-one. Goals for a role like Aziz's might be owning one category of routine queries in week two, with the buddy reviewing his replies; producing one weekly client report for the manager to review in week three; and dealing with first contact for one smaller client on his own in week four. When the month ends, ask the new hire which parts were confusing.
Run two of your questions past a colleague before any candidate hears them. Read each one out word for word, then score the reply using your guide. Each tested question has to pass three checks:
Clarity: did your colleague understand it, or did they need to ask what you meant? Target: did the answer show the skill you were aiming at, or a different one? Scoring: could you place the answer easily with your guide, or did you hesitate between two levels?
Rewrite any question that fails one or more of these.
When Wei Ling tried her questions on Arjun, one was "How do you handle pressure?" His reply was a general one about staying calm, and her guide gave her no way to score it. She replaced it with a past-behaviour question, meaning one that asks about a particular situation from the past: "Tell me about a week when you had more client work than you could finish. What did you do?" Questions of this kind draw out a specific story, and a specific story is something you can score.
The exercise is complete once you have a hiring kit document containing a role profile, five questions, a scoring guide for each question and a written decision rule; a 30-day onboarding plan with a pre-start checklist, a named buddy, a day-by-day first week and weekly goals for weeks two to four; and two questions tested on a colleague, with any that did not work rewritten.
Build the kit and the plan, then book fifteen minutes with a colleague to test your questions.
Finish the hiring kit and the 30-day onboarding plan for one role. Then try two of your interview questions on a colleague.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).