Aquatic & Recreation Specialist GUIDE TO INTERVIEWING AND HIRING

Andrew Vaughan
Apr 12, 2018
13 min read

Hire people more effectively and efficiently this year even if you have no experience!

YOU SHOULD READ THIS IF YOU ARE:

A New supervisor in recreation management looking to learn how to hire for the season
A Parks/Recreation/ Waterpark manager looking to improve and implement their hiring plan

SUMMARY

Recreation Supervisors and Managers face a unique challenge in interviewing and hiring individuals for jobs in Parks and Aquatic facilities.

This guide is aimed at supervisors and managers who hire aquatics and recreation employees but most of the solutions you put in place apply to employees of all industry.

These employees are usually high school and college age individuals.

The guide offers how to create a hiring plan, which includes:

A Recruitment strategy
Interviewing and hiring qualified individuals

The topics outlined here are intended to either give you direct answers OR give you the direct questions you need to answer to improve your hiring process.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

How to create your own documented hiring plan or optimize the one you have
The components of a successful hiring plan
Develop , document and optimize your hiring process
Develop a recruitment strategy and plan
How to interview correctly and more effectively
How the entire hiring process can increase retention and result in increased employee consistency and job satisfaction

THE HIRING PLAN

What is a hiring plan?

A Hiring plan can be simply described as a spreadsheet with companies financial and headcount. It allows you to see budget for each role and department, and in many ways facilitates the hiring process.

A Decision to hire new employee is one of the biggest investments a company can make. A bad hiring decision can cost companies thousands of dollars, along with time, momentum and even morale. So, when building hiring plan it is important to involve all members of the leadership team in company.

The best choice for everyone (not only company but also candidates) is to build step-by-step hiring plan, which saves you time and money, and also attracts stronger candidates. The following are key components

State the objective of the hiring plan
How many people do we need?
When do we need them?

You can determine the answers to the questions above by completing the following:

Staffing Line schedules - this is basically a blank schedule outlining the positions needed for a weekly schedule and the number of hours for each position. This can then be multiplied for total daily and or weekly hours with an average pay rate. KEEP IN MIND YOU SHOULD HAVE SEPARATE LINE SCHEDULES FOR PEAK AND NON PEAK ATTENDANCE / OCCUPANCY.
% of revenue of operating budget - some operations like to determine an annual revenue goal and assign a % maximum for labor. For example labor should go no higher than 30% of the net revenue for the period or year. In theory higher usage should increase revenue allowing for higher staffing positions and shifts
Minimum safety staffing - if you run an operation with lifeguards for example you should have a minimum staffing level regardless of usage and add more staff as the usage increases. It is recommended to close attraction/pools securely rather than go lower than the minimum staffing levels.

What is the hiring timeline?

Define the end date and work backwards.

For example if you operate a seasonal facility, work back from opening day and assign dates to pre-hire training, onboarding, orientation, job offers,second interviews, interviews, screening and when you post the initial job. This process can be started months in advance depending on the number of positions

Key Components of a Hiring Plan

You need to answer the following questions:

How many employees do you need to fulfill the operating needs of the facility?
Line schedules to forecast operating budget?
How long is the complete hiring process?
How long do you start the hiring process?
How will you market to employees
Application process
Pre Screening process
How many different interviewers are there and how many interviews are there before the hiring is made
Interviewing skills practice for interviewers

RECRUITMENT PLAN

There’s huge difference between hiring and recruiting. For success of your company it is important to understand both processes.

When we talk about recruiting, we should know that this is process of looking and attracting new employees for a company. This is long and complicated process, and usually it involves several persons to select which candidates are the best for the job.

Recruitment is the first step of attracting and finding new employees, while hiring is part of the recruitment process, and is the last step.

These are some tips for developing a recruiting plan:

Treat candidates like your best customers
Understand benefit and cost of every hire
Hire freelancers when possible
Hire candidates for long term
Hire employees that thrive at each stage of the company lifecycle
Embrace a coaching culture to attract the best candidates
Provide an office space that candidates want to work in
Use data to optimize your hiring process
Ignore passive candidates
Use niche job posting sites
Create job post that will be better than others
Use video as a key part of recruitment process
Involve mobile friendly application to the process
Train your interviewers
Create an ideal employee profile

Today, when everything is about internet and social networks, a big part of recruiting process is social recruiting. This means to incorporate social media into hiring strategy. The goal is to find the best possible candidate for job.

How to develop hiring plan?

The recommended hiring process should include these steps:

1. Create the position

To create a new position, you need to know the title, job responsibilities, skills/requirements and of course salary.

You should know specific tasks that new employee needs to complete, and the estimated hours associated with each task.

Also, it is important to determine when is this role needed. A hiring timeline for normal job position usually lasts 4-9 weeks.

And the last, but not less significant, is to determine salaries and pay rates.

2. Write a Job description

After first step, you should be ready to write your job description.

Job description is first impression to seekers, and it should be accurate, concise (1 to 2 pages max), so that candidates can clearly understand what are you looking for.

Every job description should include few sections:

Job title - must be accurate and strong
About us - is outline about what your company does and why someone would want to work for you
Position details - what will be daily responsibilities for new employee
Skills and experience - list of the requirements that candidates needs to have
Compensation - is salary range.

3. Post the Job AD

When it comes to posting job ad, you have a lot of options. The best way, is to think about what kind of person you want to recruit.

By targeting a niche website or publication, you already done ‘’half of the job’’.

Other ways are:

To use recruitment agency - it is more expensive, but it will save you lot of time and effort
Advertise job ad to industry journals, magazines and websites
Advertise job ad to niche website or job search websites

4. Use a response template

One of the steps in hiring process is to create response template for candidates. With this letter your applicants will know that you have received their resume and cover letter, and that their application is under consideration.

Not sending an applicant response letter can lead to dysfunctional candidate behavior such as calling you repeatedly (or other), that can affect on your daily job/ routine.

Also, using the application response letter to communicate with your job candidates maintains your position as a reliable employee.

5. Phone screen applicant

Once you organized all candidates, you should start sending invites to the candidates you want to talk to.

It is recommended that phone screen is short and focused on the candidate’s resume, also fit to the job description. Your goal is to confirm the candidate’s qualifications and get an initial “vibe” from them.

There will be some candidates that will be immediate ‘no’, and then also ‘maybe’ and ‘yes’ candidates.

This is the second round of candidates' selection.

The next step is to meet them in person.

6. Interview in person

The best choice is to invite at least 3 candidates to interview in-person.

It is necessary to prepare for this step:

Pick your interviewers - determine who should interview the candidates (and why)
Determine timing and length of the interviews - decide the length of interview. It is usually about 30 - 45 minutes.
Get your logistics in order - make sure that you have space and time booked.
Prepare the questions - the best way is to create a template of questions.
Tell the candidates the details and schedule them - scedule exact time and place of the interview and inform candidate about it.

7. Make a decision

This is probably the hardest and the most responsible step in hiring process.

If you have one candidate, who is without talking better than others, your decision is easy.

But, if you have few candidates, and you can’t decide which is the best choice for the job, you should compare them and make a debate which one should get the offer.

Once you are ready to hire, you should write an offer letter and send it to the candidate.

It may seem that these 7 steps are a lot. But, when these steps are formatted and streamlined, they will become automatic and save you money and time.

INTERVIEWING AND HIRING

The job interview is a unique meeting as its both an opportunity for an applicant to ‘sell’ themselves as ideal employee and the interviewer to ‘sell’ the candidate on the benefits of joining the organization.

Types of interviews

Phone interviews

Video interviews

In person interviews

How to conduct a professional interview and make a hiring decision

Once you decide which candidates you want for an interview in person, there are few ways to conduct professional interview and make the best decision for your company.

You should take notes about your candidates. These notes should be professional and relevant. For example, if you notice that some candidate didn’t appear dressed properly, you should write that down.

When interview is over, these notes can help you to decide which candidate is the right person for the job.

How long should an interview last?

The answer is ‘it depends’. Before deciding on your ideal interview length consider the following in your hiring plan:

Too little time may mean you can’t pick up on candidate skills and attitudes

How to develop applicant tracking and scoring system?

Applicant tracking and scoring system is a type of software application, that organizes recruitments, and also makes hiring process easier.

When you have a lot of resumes, this software, which is web based, makes a selection and determine which candidates are the best fit for the job position.

Applicant tracking and scoring system operate by searching resumes for certain criteria or just by searching for some keywords. Many of these softwares have the ability to bulk message candidates, rate them, and store notes about them.

It is recommended to use this software when people who are doing the hiring are having trouble keeping track of applicants.

For sure, it will save your time, paper and help you to stay organized during hole hiring process.

Hiring from last season

It can be very advantageous to you I are rehiring from the previous season, as they are experienced at the facility, require less orientation and knows the management expectations.
However you will also need to factor in burnout from the previous season, be aware as they may have picked up bad habits or are on the decline in their performance and the impact it will have on the group of new individuals, especially those who are enthusiastic on joining the group

Putting an applicant at ease

A job interview is often considered one of the most stressful experiences in life, which can be bad for the candidate and just as problematic for the interviewer.

A stressed candidate simply can’t show you their best side, and it really becomes difficult to you to make the best decision for the job.

Here are top 10 tips to put an applicant at ease:

Make sure the interview room is welcoming, with natural light flooding in it.
Make sure that your interviewees are greeted by a friendly member of staff and that they know that they’re going to be taken care of. If possible, greet them yourself.
Offer candidate a drink if appropriate
Introduce the company and its story or background
Keep your questioning clear and concise
Keep the interview as informal as possible
Ask something specific about a point they’ve made on their CV in one of their previous roles.
No curveball questions
Leave difficult questions until the end
While you’re keeping an eye on your candidate’s body language, don’t forget your own. Keep smiling, keep an open posture and make sure you seem receptive to their ideas.

List of illegal questions you must not ask during the interview

Types of Interview Questions

As already mentioned, interviewing is not an easy task, but asking the right questions can in many ways help you to choose star candidate.

There are three types of questions that can help you to get to know your candidates: skills-based, behavioral, and situational.

Skill based questions are related to candidates experience with tools, technologies, and industry standards. They help you to find out the difference between theoretical and practical knowledge of candidate.

Behavioral and situational questions will be explained in further text.

What is behavioral interview question

Behavioral interview questions are those who allow you to learn about the candidate's past behavior and performance in certain situations. This can help you to predict how they will perform in the future, if you hire them.

You should choose questions that are good fit with the role you are looking to fill, and also make sure what would you like to hear in response.

Always use the same questions for each candidate for the same position, to ensure consistency.

You should ask questions to evaluate candidates in these categories:

Ability to lead
Judgment and prioritization
Achievements
Work relationships
Accountability
Growth and integrity
Collaboration
Humor

What is scenario interview question

Scenario interview questions are also known as situational interview questions. They are similar with behavioral questions. Only difference is that you present candidate a hypothetical situation.

Actually, you want to give candidate exact situation and ask how would he or she behave.

The point is, to see how they really think and handle in different roles, without much time to prepare.

How to score behavioral and scenario interview questions

Behavioral and scenario interview questions offers a planed scoring system for each question. At the same time questions are developed for the interview, you should know what is the best answer.

Only team members who know the job best can develope scoring system for these questions.

Answers should be ranked from excellent, to marginal and poor.

An excellent answer reflects probable success in job task.
A marginal answer is one that reflects difficulty in performing job task.
And, a poor answer is the one that reflects failure in performing job task.

This kind of scoring system is the easiest way to decide which one candidate is the best for your job position.

Interview questions to avoid

For interviewing process it is important that every recruiter, hiring manager, executive and department manager must know that asking illegal interview questions can lead to discrimination and end up with lawsuits.

Recognizing these potential danger areas is the best way to avoid saying the wrong thing during an interview.

It is recommended to have two people responsible for interviewing and hiring. They should develop interviewing forms, with all objective points, as checklist. Beside that, this ensure consistency between candidates, create documentation to support hiring process, and also avoid illegal interview questions.

What are bad interview questions

There are lot of examples of interview questions and statements that you should avoid.

These are just some of them:

You should avoid asking female applicant detailed questions about her husband, children, and family plans. This can be considered as sexual discrimination.
Older applicants shouldn’t be asked about their ability to take instructions from younger supervisors.
When describing the job avoid using terms like "permanent," "career job opportunity," or "long-term."
You shouldn’t ask improper questions, make discriminatory and binding contract statements.

Obviously, you have a lot of things to prepare for the interview. Review the applications, resume cover letters and test results, also, other materials about candidates, write a list of interviewing questions… Maybe, this seems a lot of work, but it will end up with choosing the most qualified candidate for the job.

Best interview questions

Although there are lot of questions that you can ask candidates, only few of them reveals theirs personality, strengths, weaknesses, knowledge, skills and abilities.

Point is to write questions carefully, so that you can figure out as much as can about the person behind the resume.

Experience says that best interview questions are:

To ask candidates how they can contribute your company
To ask job candidates what sets them apart from competition
To ask candidate to explain positive and negative decisions he/she has made in his/hers career
To describe the best boss they ever had (so far)
To tell you about things that motivate them
To tell you what make them frustrated
To tell you about previous relationships with colleagues
To tell you how they see themself in a five years

What is a group interview

There are two types of group interviews.

The first type is when multiple interviewers meet with and interview one candidate. These panel of interviewers usually includes representatives from different departments in company (human resources, hiring manager, future co-worker).
The second type is when few candidates are interviewed at the same time by one interviewer, usually by hiring manager.

Sometimes hiring managers combine both types of group interviewing.

Group interview questions

When organizing group interview, you should ask, not only standard interviewing questions but also questions that require candidates to work in a team.

Asking that kind of questions you can see how candidates work alone, but also how they act when they work in a group.

You should concept questions so to have insight in candidates personality and working capabilities.

To see if:

Is candidate team player, or just looking opportunity to sabotage other interviewers
Who is leader and who is the follower
Can candidate solve problems with others team members
Is he/she comfortable taking instructions from someone else
Which candidate stands out from the group

Group interview advantages and disadvantages

Advantages

This kind of interview is very efficient. It allows you to interview multiple candidates at the same time. A group interview for 6 may last 1 hour depending on the number of applicants, compared to 20 minutes each which could add up to 2 hours with 6 candidates.
Shows interviewer which candidates work well with others, and will be a great fit to company culture.
On other hand, it gives you a chance to faster eliminate unwanted candidates who doesn’t fit the job profile.
So, the biggest advantage of group interviews is that it saves time (and money) for busy hiring managers.

Disadvantages

Some examples of disadvantages are that group interviewing creates tough competition between candidates. In some cases it can affects on their productivity and working capabilities.
Other disadvantage is that, during group discussion it can be some miscommunication between the candidates. This can lead to conflict, and that is something nobody wants.
Also, one or two candidates may dominate the discussion stopping others from contributing.
To effectively execute group interviews, requires a skilled and experienced interviewer who can switch seamlessly between an applicant who is answering too much and an applicant who should be responding more.

HIRING

Whether you hire on the spot or at at the end of the interview cycle you need to have the process laid out for onboarding a successful applicant to an employee ready to go on their first day.

BEST PRACTICE CHECKLIST

If you answer is NOT ‘hell yes’ to any of the following questions please email aquaticsrecspecialists2017@gmail.com for free coaching and consulting.

Do you have a documented hiring plan?
Is the hiring plan updated at least annually?
Is the hiring plan optimized for effectiveness and efficiency?
Do you have line schedules on a spreadsheet outlining the positions you need for peak and non peak times.
Do your line schedules have an accurate dollar figure attached that changes when positions are adjusted or removed?
Do you have a applicant marketing and recruitment plan and advertising budget?
Do you have an online application that is both easy to fill out and meets legal requirements?
Do you have a returning employee process for high school and college employees
Do you have a employee referral incentive plan that is effective and efficient?
Do you have an online application that can be updated easily
Do you have documented pre season training with quiz for new and experienced interviewers?
Do you have an interview question checklist that is consistently used by all interviewers?
Do you have a tracking sheet rating applicant answers?
Do you make notes immediately during and after an interview?
Do you have a documented process for notifying successful and unsuccessful applicants