How can you overcome the challenges of collaborative hiring?

When hiring, it’s not a game of darts; it’s chess. Step one: get your pieces in order. Know what you’re looking for. Skills? Check. Values? Check. Ambitions? Double-check. If your hiring team isn’t singing from the same song sheet, you're orchestrating a mess. People, the most vital asset, deserve clarity, not a fuzzy spectrum of criteria. Lose the ego, shed biases, align your squad, and laser-focus on the essentials. Why? Because a clear game plan beats chaos Every Single Time. So, set the stage, align the players, and hire like you mean it. Boom.

Defining the hiring criteria is such an obvious yet overlooked way of ensuring effective collaborative hiring. On more than one occasion I've had candidates tell me about applications where they have interviewed for a job -or even worse, started a job - that was nothing like the job description that they originally applied for. This happens when the HR team, recruitment team, and line manager all have different expectations of the role because the hiring criteria isn't clear. Ensuring everyone has the same understanding of the role is a simple way to avoid an error like this.

I am a firm believer that one should always have a through feedback system so that we can keep a track of every outcome and interview that has happened. Given this, I have worked with my hiring team in past to create a feedback form which can be circulated to hiring managers with the key KRAs/skills that we are looking to hire for and then the interviewer can fill in the same, it can be either done through ATS or Shared drives. This helps in consolidating the feedback and at the same time each stakeholder involved is aware about the potential candidate and to make sure this happens in time; we kept a time window for interviewer to fill the form, which allowed us to be more efficient in terms of tracking the feedback status.

Look, hiring's a team sport. You wouldn't throw a rookie into the Super Bowl without training, right? Your hiring crew? Same deal. It's not just about filling seats; it's an art and science mash-up. Train them. Equip them with the tech, the protocols, and the no-BS approach to selecting talent. Dive deep into that software. School them on the do's and don'ts of interviewing. Heck, teach 'em to sidestep biases. Why? Because every hire reflects your brand's DNA. You mess that up? You're not just hiring an individual, you're compromising your company's future. Train to win, or don't play at all.

The success of your hiring process involves taking a step back and taking a helicopter view to analyze its overall effectiveness. By doing so, you can identify the areas for improvement, address weaknesses, and prioritize the development of the most effective hiring practices. It empowers all participants of collaborative hiring to overcome further challenges and make strategic decisions based on key findings.