Hiring for success and engagement, not speed

Over the past few months I have noticed a number of articles and discussions around the idea of hiring fast is becoming more important and I've seen some discussion around hiring speed as a primary measure of success. I want to repudiate that view - not because I think that hiring speed shouldn't be something to be measured (everything should be!) just that it is by no means the most important thing to be concerned with in a strong hiring process.

Know your culture

The process of hiring starts with knowing your own culture and understanding what you and your team feel is important.

When I started at SitePoint one of the first things that we did was to go through a process of defining and outlining our Foundation beliefs, Purpose, Vision and Values as a team. This helped to both benchmark where we were as a culture and also to set ground rules as a team for what we expected of each other, new hires and most importantly, individually, from ourselves, both behaviourally and conceptually.

A strong cultural base is important for hiring as it provides you with the ability to measure a new hire from the point of view of their behaviours and beliefs well before you hire - important in that a mismatch in foundational beliefs can cause an incredible number of issues later on if not understood and effectively managed.

If you don't have a good view on all of the cultural elements described here a focus on the kind of organisation you would like to be (particularly in the case of start-ups) can be important as a bad hire in early days can entirely throw you off target from your desired culture.

Bring the team into the process

In concert with the above, a focus on ensuring that the team (both direct contact and the wider team) get the opportunity to interact with a potential new hire during the process is incredibly important and shouldn't be left aside in favour of moving quickly.

Exercises like peer programming or working and collaborating directly with people the candidate would be interacting with on a day-to-day basis is important to understand how they'll likely work - plus it gives a much deeper ability to see them in action - a much more powerful way of getting an idea of their strengths and possible weaknesses and a more real way of gaining insight.

In many cases organisations leave this kind of activity aside as it can be difficult to organise and can add time to the process - I don't agree that this is the case and the benefits far outweigh any perceived issues around speed of hiring that might occur.

Test and hire on data

Testing of skills to gain more of a view of actual skill levels and skill sets is almost a must from my perspective - another thing that tends to be put aside in a lot of cases where people see fast hiring as being a primary driver.

Testing should give you more than pure data, the ideal is you get to see the candidate's thought process - given a problem, how will they attack it. Are they good at dealing with flexibility and change, can they follow direction, are they innovative in their thinking? All good stuff you'll miss if you don't test.

Hire for the special, the difference and the times ten

One of the biggest things that I feel that you miss in a 'fast hiring' environment is the ability to look for the special, the diverse and the times ten in potential candidates - what else will they bring that you haven't thought of, do they have special skills or experience not present in the organisation as it stands, can they bring a diversity of thought to the company that you don't currently have.

This piece isn't easy and in a lot of cases can take longer and be a lot harder than the ease of a fast hire but I'd contend that the benefits can be huge by comparison. As a manager you are only as good as your team's ability to innovate, deliver, collaborate and learn - hiring the wrong people can leave you in a situation where you erode those advantages to the point where you'll be unable to hit the goals that you and the team set for yourselves.

Hiring for speed rather than difference provides for the short term but not the longer term need for growth.

Engage, Engage, Engage

Big, slow hiring processes tend to happen in organisations that see themselves as destinations - "we know you want to work here and we can afford to make you wait while we tick the boxes". The last thing you want to do to a candidate is disrespect them in that way.

This is probably the crux of my argument against the need for fast hiring - I don't believe that speed is the key, I do believe that engagement is. When you receive a candidate CV that should be the first step in an on-boarding process that should not finish until 6 months after the candidate started with you (and should be pat of an ongoing process!).

Engagement means a strong focus on ensuring that you'r building trust and engaging with each candidate in a personalised and respectful manner and using every opportunity in your communications to build openness, transparency and trust. This in my view is far more important than speed. As a candidate I want to understand what the organisation is like - respect me, be open with me, inform me and trust me to be open with you about my own job-seeking process and I'm far more likely to continue through the hiring process, even if that were to take longer than others.

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I'm well aware that sometimes you just have to dive in and get a hire done fast - sometimes it's unavoidable and I've done it myself, sometimes with a positive outcome and sometimes negative. Companies that make a habit of hiring fast over hiring well and enhancing their outcomes miss a huge opportunity and treating hiring like something that needs to be done as expediently as possible can only lead to poor or negative results in the long term.

I'm not advocating that you be glacially slow - there is always a balance between moving fast and getting it right, don't mess with culture along the way and look to enhance your business with very hire and I believe you're getting the process right.