Mastering the 3-Step Process for Your Perfect Hire

Sometimes, finding your ideal hire can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. And you want to find your golden needle, that the task may look nearly impossible.

In this article, I will make the impossible possible, by sharing a simple and effective 3-step process for finding the best hire for your startup.

(Pro tip: read until the end, and you can get a FREE infographic & hiring checklist).

Why candidate quality matters

In a startup, the first few hires can make or break the company. The smaller the company is, the more impact your first employees and founders will have on the trajectory of your startup.

We, as startup founders, are usually incredibly busy and pressed for time to make an important hire for our business. This may mean that we hire without a good process in place, which can be risky and result in inefficiencies later on.

In a startup, the first few hires can make or break the company.

In this article, I will share an A-Z of our recruitment process at Rogues , including a hiring example, statistics and processes in place to pick our ideal candidate out of the many applications we receive.

Why hiring process matters

I’ve certainly made the mistake of hiring people without thorough process and vetting in place. “I don’t have the time”; “We need to hire asap” - I told myself.

Unless you’re very, very lucky, this mentality often ends up in disappointment. Simply because working in startups can be rather tough, many of the candidates that may look great on paper, won’t be a great fit for your company.

This is why it’s very important to put processes in place so that you can ensure that a candidate is a right fit for the position.

As working in startups can be tough, many of the candidates that look great on paper may not be a great fit for your company.

This is why, for our Head of Marketing role at Rogues we decided to invest more time and energy in the process. Here’s how we did it, and what we learned.

The 3-step hiring journey

We had to divide the full recruitment process into 3 phases:

01. Preparation ??

02.?Filtering ??

03. Decision ??

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01. Preparation ??

What are the requirements of the role? And what are the qualities that your ideal hire should have? What is your hiring criteria, point by point? Once you have these answers nailed, you can get your job ad ready and start promoting your vacancy.

This phase involves the following steps:

?? Define job position scope and candidate requirements

?? Write job listing

?? Post job listing on multiple online platforms

?? Post job listing in groups and shared with own network

?? Define filtering process & criteria - this is the important step of defining a) what exact criteria you will vet each candidate on; b) what would be your filtering process, or filtering "stages" (see 02. Filtering).

Pro Tip: Don’t forget to create a list of the “must-haves’ here (this will help you at the next stage)! You can create a Score Card for objective scoring of selective criteria for each candidate (see section 3 for details).

02.?Filtering ??

After you’ve defined the job position’s scope and posted the job listing, applicants will be coming your way. It’s now time to dig into the filtering process.

Your goal in this stage is to narrow down the candidates to only 2-5 to reach the final stage - the Decision stage which is past the final interview.

You can define your own filtering steps to best suit your needs. Here’s an example:

?? Stage 1. Vetting Resumes & Linkedin profiles

In this stage, you go through applications received and select only those with relevant experience.

?? Stage 2. Asked screening questions to understand the candidate better

In this stage, you ask 1-5 key questions to understand the candidate’s suitability based on some of your most important criteria.

?? Stage 3. Interview 1 with the same questions for all candidates

In this stage, you interview the candidates, covering the same questions from Stage 2 and get a deeper understanding of the candidate's background.

?? Stage 4. Short assignment / task

In this stage, we give candidates a short task / assignment or question, so that you can understand more about how they’d approach the job.

?? Stage 5. Interview 2 with the same questions for all candidates

A 2nd interview which can include other co-founders and the wider team.

Feel free to adjust the above as you see fit, and as it makes sense to your needs. Bigger companies conduct 3+ interviews, for example, and have even more vetting stages. As a startup, you've probably covered most bases with 4-5 stages.

03. Decision ??

This is usually the final (and most nerve-racking) phase of the recruitment process. In this stage, you will be selecting the final applicant based on a combination of objective criteria.

As with step 2, you can modify these factors to match your own needs, just make sure that you weigh in all factors as objectively as possible, to eliminate hiring bias at the last stage (and yes, one criteria is your gut feeling!)

?? Score card (a must have, in my opinion)

The Score card measures a Total score for each candidate and is based on both answers and observations from interviews and profile review. This can include from X to XX number of filters, "selecting criteria". Each of these can be either a Yes / No answer or a scored answer. Write your criteria in a spreadsheet from the start, and input your evaluation of the candidate right after the interview with them, to avoid bias, and keep the score as objective as possible.

All below criteria are in addition to the score card already created, and can be weighted on a 1 to 5 point system:

?? Alignment with specific department goals

Candidates can be very aligned with the department's goals in the longer term, or just aligned for the short-term. You can evaluate based on this, if you feel that this is an important aspect for the job role you're hiring for.

?? Job description and listing match

Go back to the job listing you wrote. Is the candidate matching most of the requirements you wrote originally, or are you deviating from the brief? You'd be surprised, but unless you remind yourself what exactly you're looking for for this role, it's easy to like irrelevant canidates, just because they interview well.

?? Long-term fit

At this point, you probably have a feeling which of the candidates is here to stay for the long term, and which one may be a "job butterfly". Decide if this factor is important to you, and if it is, include this into your decision-making process.

?? Previous culture fit

Check the candidate's previous work experience to understand if they are a fit for your company. Do they have experience with startups or corporations? Did they work on their own, or with a team?

?? Candidate’s interest level

This is my personal favourite. In my own opinion, in a startup, every single employee needs to be super passionate about the company. If this is important for you too, do include this factor in your decision making.

?? Our gut feeling (yes, that’s a thing!)

We do have to be important not to include bias, and to really know if your "gut feeling" is not a bias in disguise. Think hard whether to trust your gut feeling (I do), and if you do include it, make it just one point in your decision scoring.

?? Affordability

This one is self-explanatory, but if there's a massive budget mismatch, and you can't afford to move, you may try to either negotiate or simply consider the more affordable option.

?? Weighted score for any other outliers

In this final criteria, I'd think about the outliers - what does one candidate have that's awesome, but not yet included in the criteria? And which criteria is their weakest? You can come up with a scoring system for each candidate, so that you can balance any irregularities that you haven't accounted in your previous scores.

Conclusion

While there are many ways in which you can customise your own hiring process, having a hiring framework in place ensures you hire well.

While the 3-step Preparation - Filtering - Decision process is rather flexible, some things are always valid:

?? Define what are the qualities of your ideal candidate before you start recruiting

?? Have a well-defined, well-documented and fair process in place

?? Be consistent and stick to the process

?? Have an objective scoring mechanism (i.e. Score card) for all candidates

?? Keep trying. You only learn by doing!

For busy startup founders like yourself, such a recruitment?process may sound daunting. However, if finding a super awesome team member is important to you, sometimes you just have to do what it takes.

You have to go through many haystacks to find your golden needle. ???

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I sincerely hope that other startups and early-stage companies can learn from this process, and save time and hassle in their own hiring.

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