19 Lessons for Hiring (& 7 things to avoid as owners)

“Hire Slow, Fire Fast”

This is regurgitated advice, I'm sure I have regurgitated. After making 3 mission critical hires at Intentional, that took 6 months to complete; I can personally a test the concept to 'Hire Slow' is multitudes tougher than advising it to others.

Headlines on the 3 roles:

• 307 total applicants from Seek.com.au and LinkedIn
• 66 candidates completed the first hurdle (automated invite to Talent/Values fit survey on BrilliantFit.co)
• 24 were invited to complete an strengths based assignment (customised for each of the 3 roles)
• 8 completed a 2nd interview (which a Manager/Peer attended)
• 3 offers sent = 3 offers accepted

Here is a compilation of thoughts for service businesses hiring, plus candidates applying for jobs at SMB service companies:

For The Candidate

DO:

1. Spend more time on the Cover Letter than Resume - incredible how many generic or kept another company name Cover Letters. This is your chance to craft your experience to show clearly you're alignment with the company.
2. Complete any tasks assigned to you - appreciate if applying for multiple jobs, the ones asking to do work are easier to ignore. I'd argue the ones making hiring harder and better places to work. Plus less than 50% of people actually complete the tasks!
3. Follow up if you're waiting to hear back - it can often be the owner or a senior manager pulled in many directions, a short email or text to check the status is welcome
4. Research the company - find out at least 1 interesting element or qualifying question, loved when candidates asked 'why do you only do ads'
5. Stalk the Interviewers - again highly valuable to find a connection point, 'oh you worked at Nestle'
6. Choose a time that works for you - this can be harder, but upon reflection for candidates that felt unprepared was often due to accepting the time we suggested, when clearly wasn't appropriate for their current situation (standing outside interviews, late or leaving early)
7. Ask questions - best way to show engagement is to have questions to ask. If you did have questions written down that were truly answered, repeat what those questions you had written down 'no you covered everything' is used by those who are unprepared.
8. Word up your References - a strange step in the process, but can be made much more beneficial by explaining the job or company.

For Agencies / Service Businesses

DO

1. Before posting your job ad, review the Search Results for the categories you will place your ad under
2. Craft a Job Ad that shows off your Values first, that will matter to Candidates who care and ignored by those who don't
3. Change Job Titles & Summaries if not achieving high view rate or application rate %
4. Put in place a screening task as first hurdle - with less than 50% completing that next task, can save a lot of time. Highly recommend a personality or values screening, as hugely valuable for you as company and all our candidates loved the feedback too
5. Call potential candidates to explain the job (you might think you wrote the job ad perfectly, way better having a 5 minute call than 1 hour interview) and confirm salary range on this first call
6. Provide an assignment task aligned to the job - again the minority will complete this, the output is not as important as the thinking and attitude (can now see the real values vs claimed values)
7. Conduct formal interview with their potential peers, then leave the interview early so candidate and peers can discuss - stolen from my brother, there's some questions a candidate may not wish to ask and also hugely valuable for the peers to give the 'warts and all' vs 'sales pitch'
8. Ask Candidates their status with other jobs before you jump off, helpful knowing what speed you need to move with your preferred. While 'hiring slow' is important, missing out on the right candidate to maintain your process is not
9. Give feedback to interviewees, I like to summarise the key points and give the candidate a chance to add anything or clarify any questions. I'm not interested in someone having the 'perfect interview', how many times after an interview have you thought 'I wished I remembered that'
10. Keep potential candidates in the loop. Give them opportunities to turn you down!
11. Call references when you ask for them! Identify blind spots you don’t have a read on and ask about these (not generic, what are they like to work with?)

DON’T

1. Rely solely on LinkedIn (in fact it was the worst performing for us)
2. Use your Position Description as the Job Ad
3. Put the Salary listed on the job (while it’s always praised by Jobseekers and Recruiters, when we split test, counter intuitively hiding the salary resulted in better quality candidates who were still in the salary range, as they used their filters to find jobs)
4. Base a candidate fit on their past experience or resume alone
5. Interview solo if you're the one making the hiring decision
6. Ignore the feedback of your team
7. Give false hope or waste peoples time, once you know, tell them