Your hiring process probably sucks — these 8 hiring tips don’t

Hey HR/Manager Person,

This is for you!

I’ve asked people in HR more than once what their current status in terms of hiring plans is, regarding schedule, strategy, time, and other factors. And more than once, I’ve received inconclusive answers.

As someone who works in recruitment on a daily basis at Landing.jobs, helping different types of companies find their tech talent, I’ve always been surprised with the lack of knowledge in terms of hiring processes that some companies have (you’d be surprised). Sometimes, even structured HR teams have no clue how their internal recruitment processes work and what their numbers are.

This is alarming to me. Making decisions which directly influence people’s lives without an inch of data and research is concerning. I’ve found that there are a lot of questions companies have no answer to:

• The time they have to find someone for a certain position;
• What’s the money/effort they can spend to find someone for a certain position
• The best time of year to find someone
• What the life cycle of the person in the company will be (i.e., how long the person will stay?)

Not being able to have these questions answered not only makes my job tricky and somewhat ambiguous, but it can also affect potential candidates for the position.

I have one advice for you: by finding your metrics, you’ll do a better job.

Everyone talks about the importance of metrics and performance since the early stages of creating a startup and building a company, and how much they will help you grow your processes, but as a person-driven girl, one thing that has always bothered me a lot is the disregard HR/Management gives to metrics in terms of people.

When you hire someone, sometimes it can be easy, but sometimes it can be hard. Really hard. And people make senseless decisions because they don’t reflect or research before starting a recruitment process. There is this “laissez-faire” in what concerns hiring that is a little bit distressing.

With these thoughts in mind, these are some tips that I’d like to share with you:

1. Prepare different hiring processes for different positions.
   Hiring a CTO is different from hiring a Marketer or a Customer Support. Mind this every time; it’s going to be useful. Remember to try to encompass some jobs/positions into categories.
2. Think if it’s actually worth it to build your team overseas.
   This happens way too often in the tech sector. Don’t move a chunk of your team to another country just because someone told you there is more talent there. Study the field. Are you sure it’s easier? Have you already researched the implications in terms of law, talent turnover, financial environment?
3. Don’t underestimate the time you’ll need to find talent.
   This is the most frequent mistake. Speak to people with experience in the field and ask them how much time they usually take to find talent and close their processes. Once your company grows you’ll have your own data, which you can assess and then make your own predictions.
4. Register every hiring move you make.
   When you started the process, when you finished it, how many people you contacted to fill in the position, how many interviews, how many challenges, how much time you needed to give feedback to candidates. Know your funnels. Improve them.
5. Before starting, research the most used channels to attract talent.
   Different positions require different channels. Finding a Ruby Developer is different from finding a mechanic, and so is the channel where you’re going to find them.
6. Prepare your budget in hiring.
   Not just in terms of the actual money you’re going to spend, but all the money that you won’t be making because you’re focusing on recruitment. Remember to also consider the costs of trips to your company, visas, hiring companies — this is an important advice for early stage companies, where the CEO/Manager does pretty much everything at the company.
7. Plan your hiring year considering the people you’ll need to hire.
   This means you need to understand your numbers not only in growth, but also in turnover. Are you aware of the average time someone stays at your company?
8. Don’t transform your draft papers into a software to manage your recruitment.
   The expression ATS can be foreign to you (it shouldn’t), but at least build a spreadsheet or a Trello board to organise your internal hiring processes.

Borderline: Data, data, data. Research. Plan. Increase the efficiency of your recruitment processes and test them. Again and again.

I hope this helped you. 🙂 Let’s do it?

Rita Mendes

P.S.: Meanwhile, how about a hand with hiring great tech professionals? We’re here to help you and your hiring process. Contact our Sales team and let’s get you amazing people for your team!