Setting the Stage: The Rationale for Early Investment in the Hiring Process

Editor’s Note

Moving forward in our Hire Aspirations series of articles, we will be making several recommendations that should be considered guidelines to build upon and create a customized approach for you and your company.

TL;DR

The need to fill an empty role is immediate and our instinct to treat it as such. If you have confronted any of these issues, you will understand the value of pre-planning:

Flood of unqualified candidates due to an unclear or broadly worded job description.
Unclear hiring process, which creates chaos and confusion for both internal and external staffers involved in the hiring process.
Multiple edits to the job description, even after it has been posted.
Wasted time with administrative tasks like coordinating schedules for the interview process.
High chance of making an unfit hire.

A manager learns that one of his best employees has just given a two-week notice. The HR rep receives an email from one of the company’s VPs about a new recommendation for a director of engineering in his department. The senior software engineer must inform his manager that one more engineer is needed on his team in order to finish a project by the end of the year.

These are scenarios that we have all faced. When this happens, our instinctual reaction is to immediately fill the void. Fire up a job description, quickly meet with the hiring manager, then post on a related job site and wait for the influx of resumes. But in our haste, we miss the opportunity to pre-plan for the upcoming hiring process, which will inevitably have some negative effects in the future. Here is an example where a qualified candidate (who was referred by an internal employee) applied for a position and the internal recruiter reached out with the following message:

The candidate becomes lost in a maze of disorganization after filling out an application. The recruiter admits to being brand new and hadn’t yet spoken with the company’s CEO. She says the same later about the CTO when the candidate follows up. Eventually, their communication hit a hard stop. The issue here is not only blatant disorganization, a job posting with which the internal recruiter is unfamiliar and also has to hunt down executives for information, but also the recruiter’s communication mismanagement.

The last message on February 4th, after two weeks of exchanges, was from the candidate, who the internal recruiter decided not to respond to at all. One of the unfortunate side effects of this interaction was that since it was a referral from an internal employee, the miscommunication and ill-preparedness will have a negative rippling effect on the relationship between the internal employee and the company (why should the employee recommend another candidate?), as well as the candidate and employee who referred them.

Restaurants would never open with only half a menu and no way for the executive chef to communicate with servers, but a similar scenario has been playing out in the hiring process, in different shapes and scenarios, of most employers. Our earlier example serves as compelling evidence as to why it’s necessary to field a hiring team, assign various roles and responsibilities to each member and establish a pre-planning process.

Investment of Time Before Hiring

We have a job posting to fill and the need seems urgent. Our immediate response is to start right away. Create the job description, or update an old one, meet briefly with the hiring manager, post the job on all the regular paid and free job boards, and wait for the resumes to come in. That’s how it begins at most companies. Some companies have processes for hiring but they are very rudimentary. This is evident by talking to the people involved in the hiring process and asking the simple question, “What is the hiring process at your company?” Most answers will differ wildly within the organization, and more importantly, within a division in the company. Most hiring processes start with placing a job description on a job board and setting up the next steps as they come along. While we appreciate the need to jump in the deep end, we also understand the importance of putting our best foot forward, and in order to accomplish that, a bit of pre-planning is needed.

The Need for Pre-Planning

In June 2020, the CEO of a startup reached out to a potential candidate for the role of Vice President of Engineering. The CEO stated in his email that he was looking for someone who is “highly motivated, collaborative, entrepreneurial, engineer, interested in building an engineering team and execution strategy.” This piqued the candidate’s interest and a conversation began, which led to interviews with the CEO, COO, product owner and a few of the other members of the startup. Everything seemed to line up well and an offer was extended. However, during the discussion of an offer, the CEO said “We’d like to extend an offer for you to join us as a Senior Architect.”

The candidate was confused and questioned the title change from VP of Engineering to Senior Architect. The CEO tried to give reasons but eventually relented and continued the offer discussion. “We’d like to extend the offer for a 3-month contract with the opportunity to go full time after that,” the CEO continued. Again the candidate wondered why the change in the initial terms. After a few minutes of discussion, the CEO relented again.

It would be great to dismiss these red flags as mistakes of an inexperienced startup but unfortunately that was not the case. The candidate joined the startup, hoping to make a positive impact, but the missteps in the interview process were indicators of internal strife at the company, resulting in a negative outcome for their relationship, which did not last very long, and the startup eventually was shut down on December 31, 2021.

This is not an isolated example and it is one that is pervasive among companies of different size and structure. That’s why it’s very important to understand the role and expectations in candidates and future work that they will be doing. A new hire is a very important step – one that will not only alleviate some of the workload from existing employees but potentially be a lasting addition to your organization. It will also allow the collective team to breathe a sigh of relief and concentrate on the important tasks at hand. One can sympathize with the need to post the job description as soon as possible. But how would one know that a job description is incomplete or unclear? We will examine this in detail in upcoming articles. However, some of the common symptoms are:

Flood of unqualified candidates due to an unclear or broadly worded job description.

Unclear hiring process, which creates chaos and confusion for both internal and external staffers involved in the hiring process.

Multiple edits to the job description, even after it has been posted.

Wasted time with administrative tasks like coordinating schedules for the interview process.

High chance of bringing on an unfit hire.

This last bulleted point may potentially have the most negative impact on the hiring process and morale. There’s a huge expense associated with hiring the wrong person. The prevailing thinking about the cost of replacing someone is that it can range anywhere from 50% to 200% of an employee’s annual salary based on their pay grade within the organization and skillset. The rippling and residual effects of an unfit hire will also erode the confidence of your internal team in the hiring process.

The act of pre-planning not only helps avoid the common pitfalls listed earlier, it also allows for a smoother transition from one stage of hiring to the next, making the experience much easier for all participants in the hiring process.

In the next article, we will talk about the benefits of pre-planning and what that means for time commitment and strategies.

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