Hiring Harmony: Delivering a Process that Satisfies All Stakeholders

A new episode of The Speed to Hire Show featuring Erin B. from MERU just dropped…and there’s A LOT to unpack.

I’ll get into all the things that jumped out at me during our conversation, but let me start by saying, my key takeaways relate to one core theme: helping all stakeholders and hiring managers (essentially everyone needed in the hiring process) get what they want.

Let’s take a top-down approach.

Interested in heading straight to the full episode? Watch it here.

What the Organization Wants

As an organization, especially with sub-500 employees, each hire you bring on impacts your culture. Therefore, part of your interview process must be dedicated to evaluating candidates for culture fit (or whatever “fit” variation you want to call it).

That starts with the core values of your organization, but also includes things like:

• Mission and Vision - Does the candidate believe in what you’re doing?
• Objectives - Does the organization’s goals and trajectory resonate with the candidate?
• Work Environment - Is the organization’s way of working suitable for the candidate?

Those are all topics we can go deeper on another day, but for now, let’s talk about assessing for core values alignment.?

Here’s Erin’s take:

The TLDR -

• Don’t ask questions that specifically reference your core values, which a candidate can just reverse-engineer an answer to based on their research.
• Do ask behavioral interview questions, including asking for real-world examples. This will provide a great opportunity for you to follow-up and dig deeper.

Here’s a rather generic but clear example of this in action including a Spark Hire core value:

Core Value: Set high standards.

• Poor Interview Question: “What does “setting high standards” mean to you?”
• Better Interview Question: Describe a project where you felt the quality of the work was especially important. What actions did you take to ensure the outcome met your expectations, and how did you measure success?

Building questions like this into your hiring process is a good foundational step for helping the organization get more specifically what it wants: a high-performing employee who stays a while.

What the Hiring Manager Wants

Running a successful hiring process starts with an Ideal Candidate Profile.

This is easier said than done, especially when working with hiring managers that hire infrequently.

For this reason, getting alignment upfront is not just important, but critical; it’s the ongoing calibration that helps you dial into what the hiring manager really wants.

Listen in to Erin talking about the process MERU goes through with hiring managers to keep them engaged long-term:

The TLDR -?

Collaborate on all things related to the job description.

• What will the role entail?
• What skills and behavioral competencies are needed?
• Does the compensation align with the candidate profile we’re seeking?

Determine how you’re going to evaluate candidates against the profile.

• Who needs to be involved?
• What steps are needed in the process?

Sync early and often on candidates in the pipeline to know what “good” looks like.

The point that really sticks out to me is that Erin’s team isn’t just putting a few candidates in front of a hiring manager to see if they’re a good fit. They’re sharing a group of candidates AND highlighting to the manager who they believe would be shortlisted from that group.

This is a good practice to ensure that the recruiter not only knows what to look for when they search on LinkedIn, but also how to compare candidates when they apply.

What the Candidate Wants

We often think a lot about the “candidate experience” in terms of the number of steps we’re asking them to go through or how quickly we get back to them.

And don’t get me wrong – those are VERY important.

But, what’s just as important is that the candidate gets the information they need to make informed decisions throughout the process.

While the below segment with Erin is about their internal collaboration during the hiring process, what jumped out to me is when she mentions that employees will essentially test-drive parts of their hiring process when they make changes.?

Listen in:

Now, in this example, Erin’s talking specifically about a “technical screen”, but the test-drive lesson can be applicable to every step of your hiring process.

The TLDR -

If you want to identify your hiring gaps or bottlenecks, have current employees review not only the process or your interview questions, but also all communication touch points. Ask questions such as, “if you were a candidate, what else would you want to know?”

After all, we were all candidates in the hiring process at one point or another.

Pulling It All Together

If there’s one thing you take away from this, it’s that the best hiring processes are ones that are “stakeholder-led.”

What does that mean?

It means YOU, as the recruiter, are leaning into what different stakeholders want to get out of the process and continuously optimizing every step to ensure you can make it happen.

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