Amway

TJ Scott

TJ Scott is a Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist at Amway, based in Grand Rapids, MI. With over 14 years of experience in Talent Acquisition, he has worked in both third-party headhunting and corporate recruiting, specializing in Research & Development, Technology, and Professional roles. Passionate about helping job seekers succeed, TJ regularly shares interview and job-hunting tips on social media to help others avoid common mistakes he encounters. Having led recruiting teams in the past, he understands the challenges of both hiring managers and candidates—bringing a well-rounded perspective to the hiring process. When he’s not connecting top talent with new opportunities, you’ll likely find him drinking coffee, eating good food and spending time with his family.

Over the past few years, how people get into the jobs that they hold have come under scrutiny. While many of the standards that we use are born from efforts both historic and recent to create fairness and opportunity, there is now debate over their effectiveness.

The goal of Talent Acquisition in any organization is to ensure that the company has access to the best talent available. As a Talent Acquisition lifer, I am intimately familiar with how thoughtful hiring practices directly impact the talent that comes into an organization. From that lens, I can see the standards and practices created to provide greater opportunity and fairness continue to be essential in providing a level playing field. These practices will not go anywhere, as they are practices that aren’t meant to create unfair advantages. Rather, they were created to remove them.

“To get the best talent and the strongest workforce, you need an equitable process that prioritizes fairness and consistency”

Requiring Fair Standards

Before a requisition is even posted, the work of the Recruiter begins. A properly trained and deployed Recruiter will work with the hiring leader to flesh out what is required for a particular role. And through these conversations, the foundation for a fair and equitable hiring process is created. The work of the Recruiter is to get down to the basic qualifications that are required to execute the role – not to post endless amounts of specific requirements.

The benefit of having these basic qualifications is that it makes more talented candidates available to choose from – widening the net.

A Wide Net, But One Way

In Looking at the ideal talent acquisition funnel, one that is widest at the top and narrows as a requisition gets closer to the final decision, it’s logical to assume that candidates can come from many different sources – and you would be correct. From job boards to employee referrals, direct recruiter contact to stalking the company page, the candidates themselves come from a variety of places.

However, in the ideal state, they end up in a single place.

The Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that a company deploys is one of the most key parts of its talent strategy. But even for those companies that don’t use one, and most importantly (and this is what DEI brought into it) – every candidate that is seen by the hiring manager should come via their Recruiter and this system. Allowing candidates to be considered without first going through the system creates inequity and unfair advantage. Thus, we close the back door and require that everyone go through the main entrance.

Standard Interview Practices

Much like requiring that everyone go through the same application process regardless of where they heard about the job, ensuring that every candidate goes through the same interview process is crucial to getting to a fair result. Imagine an interview process that is different for each candidate, where one candidate could be grilled on their knowledge of DevOps in a grueling panel interview, while another candidate for the same role sits down with a group of potential future teammates to talk soccer because they went to the same university. How would either situation benefit anyone?

Instead, properly implementing standard interview practices with standardized questions and scorecards ensures that every candidate is given the same opportunity to impress – and that the hiring leaders know what they’re getting.

And after the interview, the hiring leader has a decision rationale that they can fall back on; they hired the best person for the job. They have the paperwork and data to back it up.

A Defensible Process

The beautiful thing about these practices is that they create a fair and defensible process. Every step is geared towards making the process equitable as possible. And they are relatively straightforward to adopt. I should know, as I have both championed their implementation and led a team that implemented them.

In my own experience, leaders are more confident when making hiring decisions because of these practices. They know that they have followed a structured, fair process. It’s not about adherence to any specific “initiative” – it’s about ensuring that the best talent rises to the top.

Without these practices, a company can slip back into bad habits; hiring individuals who knew the right person and slipped him a resume, sidestep the interview process because they went to the “right” school and had the “right” friends, and moving them into a role that everyone knew they are unqualified for.

For HR leaders, the choice is clear; retain (or create) hiring processes that ensure fairness, or risk returning to an era where nepotism, bias, or a golf club membership shape the workforce. To get the best talent and thus, the strongest workforce, you need an equitable process that prioritizes fairness and consistency. Your company deserves it.