Give your recruitment process a little “KISS”

To scale any organisation, the need for a recruitment process that works is key. Having a process that is slow with multiple steps that involve the candidate or hiring team taking hours away from their working day, will end up with both parties becoming disengaged quickly. Combining?that type of process?with a candidate driven market, much like the one we are finding ourselves in now, organisations will find themselves losing candidates at various stages throughout the interview process causing headaches and delays to hiring. Sound familiar??

To maintain a positive experience for the candidate and hiring team, giving your recruitment process a little “KISS” is a wonderful way to find the right talent and the most efficient way. Now, by “KISS” I am not talking about playing Gene Simmons in the background of your interviews or turning up to your Zoom session with your kids artistically drawing on your face with a permanent marker (This could be a great icebreaker though!). I mean taking a time to understand the words of the great Michael Scott (Apologies to those who have not watched the US version of the Office), who had a simple rule in business, which was to “Keep It Simple, Stupid.”?

You may ask “What makes a simple recruitment process?”, and there is no methodology that explains from A-Z what a simple process looks like. It can?depend on the role that you are hiring for. Some processes may require 6 or 7 steps due to technical assignments or needing to meet with extended members of the team, but if you are looking at every step of the process when developing and asking yourself “Is this step necessary?” or “What are we looking to get out of this interview?” then you will be on the right track to make the process efficient and ultimately simple.?

For example, a hiring process for an Account Executive should last no more than 4 or 5 steps. This process could look like:?

• Talent Acquisition Interview?
• Hiring Manager Interview?
• Sales Engineer Interview?
• VP/Leadership Interview?
• HR Interview (This step does not happen at all organisations and is very much up to the discretion of the business. I will add that it offers a terrific way for candidates to introduce to HR, and ask any last-minute questions about policies, benefits, culture etc).?

Some organisations do implement a presentation stage to interview processes. Again, this is up to the discretion of hiring teams, but asking if it is necessary and remembering that many organisations are not asking for this is a good thought process. Put yourself in the shoes of a headhunted candidate (someone not actively looking) ... If you have two opportunities with one asking for you to prepare a 30-minute presentation and 6 other interviews and another asking you not to prepare a presentation and only 4 interviews. Which one do you think the candidate will opt for??

A challenge as companies scale, say from 100 to 500 employees, the reporting line becomes longer and not all managers like to lose control of hiring processes. It makes sense. You have scaled from 100 to 500, making great hiring decisions along the way, so why should you change? This is where upper management trusting the middle management that they have built into making hiring decisions becomes key. There comes a stage where a senior leader (say CRO or CEO) cannot be involved with every sales hiring process, and this “letting go” can help an organisation remove a step from the interview stream. They of course should be involved in management hires that will affect the culture of the organisation, but if you are going to hire 30-40 sales hires globally on the journey to being a centaur, it needs to be scalable. Having your CEO speak to candidates is great, but does the diary allow it and does the candidate need it??

Finally, creating a simple interview process needs to be structured. You are trusting 4 interviews (Typically 4x 1 hour conversations) on making the decision that this hire is going to be your next Jim Halpert or Pam Beesly. You need to be sure that each interview has a purpose, and defined objective from the conversation. At the start of each process, spend the time with your Talent Acquistion team to understand what each interview is going to focus on, and what attributes you will look to assess. It could be sales experience, culture fit/add, technical knowledge, questions around company values etc. Once you have figured this out, build your best hiring team. Highlight who is the best person to ask those questions, and make sure they are skilled to handle the interview (Interview training is a great tool to get everyone on the same page!) and then be purposeful in setting up that team. Share expectations of what you want to get out of the session, and hopefully at the end of the process, you will have evaluated each candidate fairly and end up with the best hire for the team.?

From a candidate perspective, having the ability to know from the first call with Talent Acquisition that the process is simple, structured, and not going to take up 4 months of your life, this will set them up for success and confidence speaking with the hiring team. I love it when candidates ask me to talk through the hiring process, and who each person is that they will be speaking with and why. It shows forward planning, which for many roles is a great asset.?

Having a simple and structured interview process allows for both parties to get the most out of the time spent together, in the most efficient way possible and ensures that the correct decision is (hopefully) made in the end. ?

"Sometimes I'll start a sentence and I don't even know where it's going. I just hope I find it along the way (Michael Scott)". Just?make sure your interview team know where they are going before they start! ?

For those that have watched the Office, do you prefer the US or UK version? Emotive topic :)?