Tackling the Hiring Hang-up: Say Yes to Speed and Clarity

Ever wondered why your hiring process seems to drag on forever? 

Are you stuck in the cycle of batch applicant review, hoping for that 'perfect' candidate while leaving potentials hanging in the 'maybe' zone? 

We, Max and Mike, are here to help you break free from this cycle in this episode of the Hiring Experience. We tackle the crucial importance of speed and efficiency in hiring, advocating for a decisive yes-no approach rather than a vague 'maybe'. We discuss the pitfalls of batch review and illuminate the importance of consistent follow-ups and immediate decisions to keep candidates engaged.

Our conversation further delves into the necessity of a clear alignment of expectations within your hiring team for a productive process. We share our personal experiences and tactics, shedding light on how having a set criteria and an agreement amongst all stakeholders can lead to more effective candidate selection and better hiring outcomes. We stress on the importance of acting fast, hiring quickly and ensuring transparency to the candidates. 

So, if you're looking to revolutionize your hiring experience and secure the best talent, this episode is a gold mine! Max and Mike are ready to guide you on this journey, join us!

We love to hear your hiring experience, whether you're a hiring manager with 100s of hires, about to make your first hire, or an applicant that has a story to tell. Share your stories with Max & Mike at hiringexperiencepod@gmail.com

This podcast and the matters discussed herein are for informational purposes only and should not to be construed as advice for a particular company or person. This podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional or legal advice.

Transcript

Intro: 0:03

This is the Hiring Experience the podcast that helps you break down the art and science of hiring. Hosted by Max and Mike friends, founders and creators of rapid hiring, on a mission to bring an end to the resume, bringing you tactical advice to help you attract, select and retain the best talent. This podcast and the matters discussed herein are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as advice for a particular company or person. This podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional or legal advice.

Max: 0:36

Okay. So we talk about it all the time when it comes to the speed of hiring, in terms of what it means to hire fast and how to actually hire fast, and that a lot of people get stuck on the initial review of whatever that first agent they're hiring processes, in the how they process applicants or how they receive applicants and, at the end of the day, all of hiring. The root of how to make everything fast is about building good habits and doing everything in a very strict yes no, fashion. There's this notion that we should be shortlisting candidates into this maybe pile, but it's not a maybe. We need more information. It's maybe somebody better will come along. And at the end of the day, if you need more info on somebody like this person's got it. This person's intrigued me, I'm interested, I want to know more. That's the point of an interview.

Max: 1:40

But if you've got them on a maybe track because you think, well, they applied on the first day, if jobs only been open for a day, maybe we'll get somebody better tomorrow. Let's see what happens, and so we'll just put them over here in this maybe pile. We're not going to tell them that they're in a maybe pile, we're just going to put them over here and think that they're going to remember. But at the end of the day, what we need to hit is that, yes, no track in everything that you're doing. Are they moving forward in your pipeline or are they out? Because if you're not going to hire them, or you're not going to move on to an interview, or you're not going to move on to your reference checks, your background checks or whatever stages you have in your hiring process, then just move them out.

Mike: 2:24

So I think that you need a discussion with your team, because in order to achieve that type of thing, you need to have some type of alignment in what you're looking for, so it can't be this loose definition of what you're looking for in a candidate, right?

Mike: 2:36

So, in order because a lot of people do this a lot of people compare a candidate against another candidate and then they pick the best candidate of that comparison, as opposed to picking a candidate based on an evaluation against their criteria that they've set so, with your team, with your hiring managers, with the people who are going to be doing the interviews, and all of you need to be on the same page when you're doing this. This is something that we do personally. So when we have our set of criteria that we're looking for, we need to be in agreeance on that and collaborate on that. And then if it's the first person that comes in that checks all of those boxes for that criteria, we may still conduct interviews after that or conduct like candidate evaluation after that first person, but that first person is going to receive an invitation to an interview immediately.

Mike: 3:27

It's not wait until we've reviewed another 10 before we start booking interviews, because that goes against acting fast and hiring quickly and making decisions and keeping those people in a transparent cycle where they have closure, they know if they need to move on to another opportunity or if they are going to proceed in the opportunity with you. So I think that in saying that, there needs to be a very clear alignment of what. Just to recap that, a very clear alignment of what you're looking for and how it compares against that and how you're evaluating a candidate on that, and then that decision is very easy after that because you're not evaluating a ton of candidates after you're evaluating each person against that and making a yes-no decision, like Max said.

Max: 4:09

Right and coming at it from that collaborative perspective of understanding what the role is that you're looking to do, is things we've discussed before understanding that once you've done that, once with the help of all the new modern technologies that is out there involved in hiring, you are able to then break your hiring down to what we call a five minute review a day.

Max: 4:35

Until aside from interviews, your hiring process should be five minutes if it's in the morning, like a workout. Every day you just log in, review all your new applicants in and out yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. Out done Next day and that's it, inviting all the ones that you need to invite to an interview, to an interview, and all everybody else has moved on out, and so you don't have all these candidates just sitting there waiting till you're like we'll review it when we get to 50 applicants and this batch process. That is just an arbitrary number, because you feel like it'll help us be more fair and transparent, which are very important values, but not in the sense that like how we come up with that is to just bear against it.

Mike: 5:19

Yeah, so in talking about the batch applicant review, so I think that a lot of people think that it's more efficient. So I'm going to wait until I have 50 applicants, because it's more efficient to review everybody all at once. I'm going to block a piece of time off where I can do this. I'll sit down, I'll get through all 50 of them. It'll take me less time than if I do it one at a time, where actually the complete inverse is true it's much less efficient. It's less efficient for your time, it's less efficient for the applicants and it's less efficient for actual hiring the people that you're looking for.

Max: 5:53

In the spirit of like trying to make a fair and transparent hiring process.

Max: 5:56

The batching also causes an unfairness in the time of which you apply, because the person who's the first in that batch, who applied maybe five days ago, six days ago, has been waiting for a week to hear back from you, whereas the person who just applied that morning before you started evaluating that batch now is at the front lawn. They might still be in their 10 day window and the other person might be outside of their 10 day window or just on the end of their 10 day window. And so now you're moving in an unconcruent pattern because you're not sure where people are at, and if you don't make quick yes-no decisions on each applicant, you're not going to be able to retain that person that applied earlier in your batch, because they've already been waiting around and may have already been contacted by somebody else who may be just doing the same process you're doing, but they started it three days before you, and so the only way to get ahead of them now before the finish line is you have to sprint past them before the finish line.

Mike: 6:59

Yeah. So I think, in recapping all of that, as with anything, if you want to get ahead, if you want to be more successful than your competition, it comes down to repetition, it comes down to consistency. So, you know, making sure that you put aside that block, that five minutes, and making sure that you're doing these things on repeat. It's not a difficult, you know a landish concept. It's just like being successful in any other aspect. You need to apply that to this.

Max: 7:26

Making that decision right away and not bringing it off waiting for something better.

Intro: 7:33

Thank you for listening to the Hiring Experience. We hope you enjoyed this episode and learned something new about the art and science of hiring. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. This helps others discover the show. Share with a friend, colleague or anyone going through the Hiring Experience right now. Share your hiring experience with us at hiringexperiencepodatgmailcom.