Tell me about a time when you positively influenced hiring practices at your current or former employer. What prompted you to take this action?
"Being new to my career, my experience taking the reigns with hiring practices is limited; however, I come with some great ideas. I am currently working towards being Gallup certified, allowing me to lead better interviews that focus on behavior, situational, and topical questions; therefore, better vetting candidates. Another area where organizations can use a refresh every year or two is how they write attractive job descriptions and advertise them to attract the top talent. This is something that I would always keep a watchful eye on."
Possessing the skills to change or improve a hiring practice in the workplace is valuable to any employer. To help your interviewer realize that they'd be hiring an agent for change if they offered you this position, talk to your interviewer about when you recognized a need to change or enhance a hiring practice. Touch on the thought process you used to determine the need for a change, the steps you took to implement the change, and how you measured the success of the improvement.
"The standard hiring practices at Company XYZ were enabling the organization to hire qualified candidates based on their experience. Too often, when new hires arrived, we found they lacked the behaviors that would enable them to be successful within our culture. I took the initiative to implement more behavioral interview questions in our hiring practices. To implement, I gained buy-in from our hiring leadership by including them early in the process of creating the questions. We worked together to create a training certification to equip leaders with the skills to interview candidates effectively. Then, we measured our success by monitoring turnover, retention, and time-to-hire metrics. We changed the process and, therefore, improved the results."
