Revamped Hiring Process

Many of my thoughts are taken from the book Who by Geoff Smart and Randy Street, but I have read many books / articles about creating a great culture and how to hire, and most concepts are simply best practices that take time, dedication, and commitment — they're typically not huge revelations.

I believe very strongly in hiring great people (or "A" players), and that they are far more valuable than even "B" players. The authors would even go as far as to say you can't be a great company without "A" players. A single hiring blunder can cost 15X an employee's base salary, so it's critical to get hiring right. And the average hiring success rate is 50%, which is apalling.

I also believe that culture is critical, and hiring, firing, and promoting based on culture is necessary to create and maintain a positive, purposeful culture. To that end, I strongly believe in coming up with meaningful, intentional, achievable core values and living by them.

I put together a Hiring "A" Players Prezi Presentation that I showed at my company to justify overhauling our hiring process (taken largely from the book "Who").

Here are a few key takeaways from my hiring process that I believe are key to its success:

• Start with your goal in mind — the perfect hire — and work backward, but always have your ideal candidate in mind.
• Try to post only on sites where great people would look. This is a little tricky, but if you post everywhere, you could be wasting a lot of your own time sifting through unqualified applicants.
• Write your job posting like it's going to be read by a very selective person. The hiring process is a 2-way street, and if the posting looks sloppy, has grammar mistakes, or is bland, the candidate may never apply. So try to write your posting in a way that's exciting, inspiring, or captivating from the start and sell the person on why he/she should want to work for you before going into the job description. In the job description, perks, and every other part of the posting, continue to remember that you're selling this person on your company, so write all parts so the positive aspects come though. Remember, you're writing to an "A" player, so write as though only "A" players are reading.
• Always include at least 1 unique question to be answered in the posting. This is incredibly useful in weeding out applicants who are not serious and are 1-click applying to every job they can. Make sure the question(s) in your posting are designed to get at whether the applicant will meet one of the most important criteria you will judge them on. This further helps weed people out quickly.
• To save everyone time and effort, do a short qualifying call first. This will help eliminate people who should never make it to a formal interview. Also, this is a great time to ask culture questions to ensure the person is a good culture fit. I have also been forced to put one quick technical question in round 1 to eliminate people who are completely unqualified.
• The second interview should be the main interview, in which you ask both technical questions and resumé questions. Here, you can dig into their work history. I like to do this in a fairly objective way, with the same questions for every job, but obviously this can be modified based on responses or job circumstances. The standard questions are:
  1. Can we talk to your boss for this job? How will your boss rate your performance on a 1-10 scale when we talk to him/her?
  2. What were you hired to do?
  3. What accomplishments are you most proud of?
  4. What were some low points during that job?
  5. What co-worker can we call? How will they describe you when we do? (Note the emphasis on when — this is important)
  6. Why did you leave that job? (Don't hire someone who was pushed out of 20% or more of their jobs)
• In order to come up with your job-specific questions, again start from the end. Write up a document listing the most important attributes of your ideal candidate. Then, write questions that try to determine whether an applicant meets each of those criteria. Every question must have a purpose and tie back to a critical attribute; otherwise, you're just wasting everyone's time.
• At every step of the interview, ask if the candidate has questions for you, and treat it as a red flag if they don't. Most "A" players are interviewing you and are selective about where they will work.
• For the final interview (preferably in-person for this one), try to get some other team members involved to ensure you're not missing something. I suggest giving very basic open-ended questions for them to ask the candidate about his/her previous positions. Then, be sure to get their feedback and take it into consideration — after all, they will be working with this person, too.
• You will probably want the person to actually demonstrate some skills in this part of the interview, whether that's coding something or performing a sample task, problem-solving / brainstorming, or making a mock phone call. This is the time to ensure the person actually has the skills he/she purports to have.
• Never skip the reference check. References should just confirm what you already know, but it's possible for a person to get through rounds 1-3 and still have skeletons in the closet. Here is where they might come up.
• References tend to not want to say negative things, so do your best to decode what they're saying or NOT saying. A lot of um's and pauses aren't good. Not having much to say isn't good. Lukewarm, qualified, or faint praise is more like condemnation.
• Remember that red flags are there for a reason — don't ignore them or justify them. It can be very difficult / frustrating to try to get rid of someone if you hired him/her in spite of a red flag and it turns out to be a bad hire.
• Move quickly — you don't want to lose an "A" player because someone else extended an offer before you (but never cut corners).
• Finally, once you've determined that this is the person, don't let them go — continue recruiting / selling up until at least a couple of weeks into the job.