Last week  we discussed why it’s important to do a realistic job preview.   Well you might ask, how exactly do I do one? Companies. Internships and co-op programs are long-term realistic job previews. This set up can provide a company with an opportunity to screen candidates without a making a permanent hiring commitment, but it may take too long.   For tips on starting a job shadowing program, click here.

In the absence of setting up an internship or co-op program, you can do a realistic job preview in a day or a week. The ultimate goal is to simulate the work and the work environment in a way that helps you assess their fit and ability to perform the work and allows them to decide if the opportunity is the right fit for them.

To do this:

1. Select a set of work that this person would be doing if hired. This should be real work, things the company needs to get done anyway. You are just assigning this work to this person for the time period you’ve selected.
2. To protect any proprietary information, since you are assigning them real work, get them to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
3. Give them the basic information and knowledge to success, but don’t show them how to do everything. Provide them with any basic internal knowledge they need to get the work done and introduce them to people that they will need to work with or through to get the tasks done.
4. Bring them into the office (or if the work is virtual, let them work virtually) and give them the amount of time you think would be needed to complete the work to get it done.
5. Let them go and do the work.
6. Pay them the rate they would be getting paid for the amount of time they worked.   This adds to the realistic nature of the exercise.
7. Assess how well they did the work, how needy they are in relying on others to get the work done and how well they interacted with others in getting the work done. Ask those they interacted with what they think. Creating a rubric of key criteria that corresponds with a scoring mechanism is a good idea.   This helps to eliminate subjectivity and allows for better comparison across candidates.

Because a realistic job preview is somewhat involved, we suggest doing it towards the end of the process with your top 2-4 candidates.

Have you ever done a realistic job preview? How did it help you make a better hiring decision?