Peer Reviewed Staffing
When I was a young TV editor, I applied to a job for a huge national cable conglomerate. In the initial interview with HR, the HR manager asked me if I had experience with Avid Media Composer. The question caught me off guard. I had plenty of experience with Avid, but she had pronounced the name wrong.
As much as I wanted to believe this HR manager knew who to hire (considering she had selected me for an interview), it struck me that someone who had a major hand in the hiring process for one of the largest media companies in the country should probably know enough about TV production to be able to pronounce the name of the most popular editing software of the time.
The idea of a recruiting process being peer-reviewed isn’t very crowd pleasing. Companies don’t want to use their specialized resources to review resumes. But it’s enormously effective to have someone with direct, personal experience reviewing candidates, particularly with more abstruse and particular positions. How many qualified candidates have been screened out because they used a synonym for a required skill that the recruiter didn’t understand? How much does it cost to hire a candidate that isn’t quite the right fit, but filled all the boxes that made it into a recruiter’s checklist?
Furthermore, there is a reason it’s peer-reviewed and not supervisor reviewed. Even as a producer and editor, overseeing entire productions, there are numerous video positions for which I get an outside opinion on because I don’t have enough direct, personal experience with them. And that’s what makes the process work: direct, personal experience.
Peer review is especially useful in hiring for creative and technical positions. In addition to job requirements that perplex the uninitiated, these jobs often have a language and culture that it is vital to understand to make an educated decision about a candidate’s potential job performance.
Peer reviewed staffing isn’t just useful in the hiring process but in selecting outside venders as well. It shouldn’t be surprising that the people who are best suited at finding candidates with the skills for success in a particular area are those who have an intimate familiarity with that area. So, if the hiring manager doesn’t have the direct, personal experience with the position they’re hiring for, consider providing a consultant who does.