Hey everyone,
Some may notice that this post is a bit shorter than usual. That’s intentional. I’m trying to use fewer words. How am I doing?
See you next year summer,
Ben
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Two Automatic Rules to Improve Your Hiring 2️⃣
Automatic rules, default settings, whatever you want to call them, have grown in popularity. Books like Nudge, framework aficionados like The Knowledge Project, and famous behavioral scientists have all trumpeted the benefits of setting automatic rules to set a default, more beneficial behavior.
Which got me thinking- establishing a thoughtful hiring process for every role in a growing company is challenging and time-consuming - two things most humans hate and thus avoid.
So I challenged myself to think of some easy, automatic rules we can all apply to improve our hiring process. That’s what this post is about.
My goal is that even if you don’t have the time/desire/willpower to implement a hiring process that makes industrial-organizational psychologists and (more importantly) candidates swoon, you’ll at least be able to be better than 90% of your competition.
Two Rules
After mulling this question over, I came up with two default settings:
Be transparent
Use intuition last
Let’s break those down.
Be Transparent
This means that, by default, you should:
Practice salary transparency. Including what it takes to be top of the range.
Explain what numbers determine success in the role and why they’re essential.
Explain the day-to-day roles and responsibilities.
Articulate why you are hiring for the role (and do so honestly, even if it portrays the organization in a less-than-flattering light).
Honestly articulate the culture of the organization.
Discuss your team and company’s maturity (i.e., “we’ve never hired for this role, so we’re looking for someone who can help us figure it out” versus “you’re the hundredth person we’ve hired for this position this month. We have a team of thirty who have designed your 120-day training course.”
Use Intuition Last
We’ve discussed this before, but delaying your intuition in life (and hiring) is a great idea that leads to much better outcomes.
In the hiring context, this means that your default process should:
Screen candidates on work sample(s) rather than resumes.
Use blind resumes whenever possible.
Start interviews with structured questions (or at least a first question with scored, objective answers).
Ask for intuitive feedback after asking for objective scoring.
Normalize challenging feedback like “they’re not a culture fit” by asking “why?”
Perfection is hard, defaults are easy
I write a newsletter about hiring and sometimes fall short of always following best practices. Yes, that’s hypocritical, but I’m also human.
Whenever I anticipate falling short, I, at the very least, enact these two default rules. Fortunately, just by having something to fall back on, you’ll be better than most hiring managers who desperately cling to practices that don’t work.