There is a giant mistake most organizations make in marketing. Bad marketers perpetuate this notion that buyers want choice. “What we need is more choices for buyers! If we just had more choices our sales would be higher!”

In fact, more choices increase buyer confusion and actually stalls buying decisions for most people. “We” (the collective lot of us) have been programmed to believe we all want lots of choices. But in reality, more choices just cause us to not really know what decision we should make.

Put two options in front of someone and it’s easy. Do you want #1 or #2? If you put 7 choices in front of someone, that decision becomes much more complex.

We don’t want more choices, we want to be confident in the choice we make!

When put in this context it’s easy to understand how talent acquisition is actually causing more frustration for hiring managers, who believe they want to see more candidates. When this happens, what the hiring manager is actually telling you is they are not confident in the choices they have already been given.

Giving them more choices, likely, will not solve this issue.

How do we fix this problem?

Here are some possible solutions:

1. Add more decision-makers into the sauce. Shared decision-making ability will help clarify the leader’s decision, and make them more confident in the decision they want to make. A great example is having peer panel interviews, where the panel tells the hiring manager this is who we would hire. The key to making this successful is telling the panel, “these are our final candidates, which one would you hire?” Hiring no one is not an option.
2. Adding some modern assessment technology data into the interview criteria. This data will help hiring managers feel confident about their selection decision.
3. Only deliver a slate of candidates to the hiring manager with an expectation that this is a final slate. You have combed the world, screened many, and this is the best of the best. We will hire from this slate, or we will be closing this requisition.
4. You will personally add your name to the hiring decision, and if this candidate fails as a new employee, you will ensure the hiring manager that you will take equal responsibility for the selection. (this doesn’t really mean anything, but you would be shocked at how this will get HM’s to make a decision!)

Now, you will notice, you can actually use all four of these together, or in any combination, to assist the hiring manager in feeling confident about their hiring decision. The one thing you must do is not fall prey to HMs who will come back and say, “I want to see some more”.

Sorry, Charlie, that’s not happening! I’m very good at what I do and what I’m giving you is the best of the best. Instead of giving you more candidates, tell me exactly what you will need from me to make sure you are confident in the decision you are about to make!

Tim Sackett

If you Google “Tim Sackett” you’ll find our Tim, and a truck driver chaplain. Our Tim is NOT the truck driver chaplain, although how awesome would that be if he was!? He is a prolific writer in the HR and TA space who just happens to also run an Engineering and IT contract staffing agency (HRU Technical Resources) out of Michigan. He also writes every day at his own blog, the Tim Sackett Project. Weirdly, he’s known as an expert in workplace hugging, which was kind of cool years ago, but now seems painfully creepy, but we still love him and he’s fairly harmless. Tim is also on the board of the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals (ATAP), lifetime Michigan State Spartan fan, husband to a Hall of Fame wife, 3 sons, and his best friend Scout. He also wrote a book with SHRM called The Talent Fix, you can find it on Amazon.

http://www.timsackett.com/