Is Your Hiring Process Broken? Question 1 of 11

The hiring process is a vital part of every company’s survival and a very revealing part of every company’s culture. You might say that how a company begins their relationship with an employee is almost as revealing as how they end it. This is the second in a series on how to be sure that your hiring process is working in a pleasant, professional, and effective manner.

This week’s question: Is your recruitment plan based on acquiring skillsets, on finding good people you want to work with, or on filling empty titles in an org chart so that budgeted funds don't disappear?
It could be for any combination of those reasons, or for any other, but your whole team should be clear on which and why. 

There are lots of reasons you might be trying to hire a new team member. Some of them require contradictory hiring strategies. Everyone involved in screening and hiring should be aware of the strategy you’re using.

There’s a reason that sports teams practice set plays as well as individual skills. Your teammates may be great at what they do, but if you want that individual greatness to add up to team success then you’re going to have to make sure that each of them is aware of their role in the greater scheme of things.

A team that’s well-coordinated uses planning to empower each individual to make good use of their own autonomous actions and spontaneous reactions. A team that is not well-coordinated is just a bunch of individuals.

Not a fan of generic sports analogies?

Imagine a Broadway-style musical where each member of the cast and crew and orchestra are working to different scripts and music and cues. The result would be a series of collisions set to a cacophony.

Or a pot of soup being prepared by a cluster of cooks who are working from completely different recipes. I love Mexican pozole and I love Norwegian sot suppe. I shudder to imagine an amalgam.

Or a piece of heavy furniture lifted by four friends, each of whom is trying to move it to a different corner of the room. How much time and effort will be lost, and how much frustration will be created?

I hope we can agree that, in each of the above cases, the better your team members are at their individual jobs, the more damage they can do when working at cross-purposes. I hope we can also agree that all of the conflict could be avoided if you were to use a few moments ahead of time to set clear expectations.

So please agree on the play before you start. Or on the script, or the recipe. For goodness’ sake, at least agree on where to put the sofa bed before you lift it up.

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Thanks for reading. I hope you’ve found this helpful. As always, please remember that these are my own opinions and I could very well be wrong about each and every one of them. It wouldn't be the first time. So, please give it some thought before trying it yourself. If you’d like to share some of your thoughts with me, here or on LinkedIn, I would consider it a kindness.