In the interest of making better “Who” decisions going into 2024, this series of blogs will guide you, the reader, on taking a systematic approach into creating growth through every hire that you make. Through this series, we’ll take a step-by-step approach into understanding all the knowledge I’ve been able to acquire over the past 7 years, with +100 companies over 4 continents, and of course making bad hiring decisions myself.
What is (Unbiasedly) Hiring?
Hiring is a topic that is so deeply rooted in a complex interconnected web of scientific and societal structures that it has had to be simplified to be understood, yet often always misunderstood. The simplest reason for hiring is growth.
What not to do?
What most people who make hiring decisions don’t understand is that the “Who” mistakes they make are pricey. I want you to take into consideration that the average hiring mistake is going to end up costing you 15x more than that employee’s base salary in hard costs and productivity lost.
Initially there are four steps (or problems) when making a hire that should be taken into account. The average success of a hire is a dismal 50% (think about all that time, energy, and effort put into for not just you but the entire organization in getting from deciding to start hiring and finally making a 50% successful hire Every. Single. Time!)
Now that we know that your success as a manager or a business owner (or recruiter) depends on how good you are at hiring the people around you. In the interest of saving your time and mine, I’ll be as direct and concise as I can be (these problems (with solutions) will be discussed in the upcoming blogs)
Let’s jump straight into it!
Problem 01 – Clarity on what needs to be done in the Job
– What is the core purpose of the job?
– Sample Job : Sales Representative for Company ABC
– Outcome of the Job : Close $1,000 worth of sales
– Action points : Speaking with customers, sending outbound emails, creating an engaging dynamic with customers for repeat sales, negotiating pricing with customers, talking to X amount of customers to reach the goal of $1,000.
– Lesson : Easiest way of gaining clarity here is reverse engineering the outcome of the job, convey that in an easy, meaningful, and understanding way.
Problem 02 – Weak flow of Candidates
– Don’t rely on talent pools, pools grow stagnant
– Always keep sourcing (Why stop?)
– Understand that Traditional talent sources are so overworked that most of the people left in them are not the ones you would want to hire
– Referrals from your personal-professional network
– Referrals from employees (who better knows similar people for their jobs other than your employees)
– Hiring Recruiters
– Hiring Recruiting Researchers
– Sourcing-sorting Systems
– Considering the job, always give candidates better offers
– HR (or whoever writes) should never write Job Descriptions without consulting whatever team (or job) you’re hiring for
– Always change the Job Descriptions depending where the company is heading
– If you’re not growing, you don’t need to hire.
– Since you’re growing, Job Descriptions need to vary because specific talents and skills are needed to aid your growth journey.
Problem 03 – Your ability to pick out the right candidate from a group of similar-looking candidates
– How are your interviews structured?
– What criteria are you using to evaluate a candidate?
– Does the person deciding the result of the hire practice supernatural strategies?
– How are you so sure that it’s easy to assess a person?
– How much are biases affecting your decisions?
– How much of a CV is truthful?
– How do you verify this information?
– Remember that people never mention their failures on their CV
– Which candidate can you afford within (unless it’s unlimited) the allocated budget
Always remember that these things must be consistently updated, unless you’re a static startup, business, company, conglomerate (fill in the blank with whatever word of your choice for a group of people legally earning profits by providing value). Plainly because you’re always changing and so is the talent that you will be requiring.
Problem 4 : Losing candidates that really want to join your team will be answered in the next blog post
