When it comes to employee selection, companies must answer a few key questions. First of all, who makes the selection decision? In some companies, the hiring manager makes the final hiring decision. In other companies, the person the potential employee will be reporting to makes the final selection decision. In other companies, someone in human resources makes the final hiring call.

A number of companies have a combination of people making the hiring decisions. With lower level positions, HR is often given the green light to make final hiring decisions. More senior level positions might require the approval of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or the Chief Operating Officer (COO). In some cases, a panel of decision makers is assembled to make big hiring decisions and often times the Board of Directors can get involved when it comes to employee selection.

Important Employee Selection Questions

Your company should also determine the roles of the operations management staff and the human resources staff when it comes to employee selection. There is a fine line between having too many people involved in the hiring process and not enough people involved in the hiring process. Operations and HR are often at odds with one another. In fact, HR often times falls under the operations umbrella so the people in operations feel compelled to involve themselves in HR related issues.

Finally, if you work in HR or operations, you must ask yourself, "What is the general selection criteria and who will be involved in the interview process?" Your job specifications should have a profile of the ideal candidate, but it's the job of recruitment to find out how much flexibility there is within the established criterion. Once the criterion is set, there should be a process in line that dictates who will be performing the pre-screening, the initial interviews, the behavioral interviews, and the offer interviews.