In my mind, hiring is almost identical to product sales. You have a product to sell to people (jobs), you have competitors, you can develop a USP, you have a conversion funnel, you need marketing etc… the two are very similar.
Despite talent being a constant and consistent challenge, product-building organisations rarely use a product mindset to optimise hiring and land exceptional people.
Here’s how to do it in 8 steps:
- 1 - Take direct ownership of hiring as a department leader
- 2 - Pick a USP or niche, and think about ‘personas’
- 3 - Ask your existing team why they joined and stayed
- 4 - Work out how you win in your target market
- 5 - Optimise your interview experience
- 6 - Make your interviews 50% evaluation, 50% sell
- 7- Make a real, individual effort
- 8 - Use probation properly as part of your evaluation
1 - Take direct ownership of hiring as a department leader
Probably already the case for most early stage orgs. IMO the talent team is there as a support / enablement team, but hiring ownership should sit with departments.
You are trying to sell your direct organisation and team to people, that works a lot better if its you following these steps, iterating, evolving your product (team/department) if needed to attract your customers (candidates).
2 - Pick a USP or niche, and think about ‘personas’
What’s unique about your org vs others that would motivate people to join? I tend to try and define at least three factors that help to outline a niche market.
e.g. Imagine you’re a remote health-tech company with average salary banding. The niche could look like this:
- A good cause - We’re doing something beneficial to society, we’ll attract people who want to work for a good cause
- Still fully remote - We haven’t shifted back to hybrid / in-office, attracting pure remote workers
- Work/life oriented - We attract people who optimise work-life balance
- Highly diverse team - We have a very diverse team including leadership, which will typically attract a diverse crowd
Our niche is starting to form. We can now think about the types of personas/stories we want, that might be attracted by this:
- An exceptionally talented engineer who’s recently had children, now seeking work life balance and greater home-time flexibility. They’ve worked in big tech etc but now want to ‘give back’ with a meaningful mission.
- An exceptionally talented engineer who’s just moved out of London - now looking for remote roles but also wants to maintain some in-person contact with semi-regular onsites. They burnt out a little at a high pace org and want a better work-life balance.
- A mid level engineer at an exceptional organisation who wants to become senior - bigger fish in a smaller pond. They’re happy to take a pay cut to assume greater responsibility and have higher impact in an org trying to achieve something good.
- etc…
3 - Ask your existing team why they joined and stayed
You don’t need to guess why people would join your company - you have existing team members who’ve already decided to join and stay. Why did your best people join? What’s keeping them there? What would help that even further? How do you reach them? Use your team.
4 - Work out how you win in your target market
You have competitors, and they are also trying to sell their roles. Why should someone go with you? Have a look at their job specs or content, hell have an engineer go through their interview process. what are they doing well? What are they doing badly? What could tip someone’s decision towards you.
As with a product, it’s time to talk to your potential customers, consider your personas and work out what they might really care about.
- Maybe relocation support lands that engineering moving out of London
- Maybe a family healthcare plan will land that new mother/father
- Maybe one article from a leader covering the importance of family time tips the balance
Whether its your blog content, perks or even changes to the interview process, you can become extremely targeted about appealing to your target audience. As with sales, this will put you a step above those taking a more generic, un-targeted approach.
5 - Optimise your interview experience
This one’s been covered to death, so I won’t dwell on it - but the interview process says a lot about your organisation. Here’s what I’m thinking about when I get interviewed:
- Do they respect my time?
- Do people on the interviews seem happy or engaged?
- Are people answering my questions in an open honest way?
- Is this pitched as the start of a working relationship, or does it feel like I’m being processed?
Have you ever noticed that you can tell a lot about a country by their airport when you arrive for the first time? You immediately get a feel for whether it’s generally efficient, noisy, clean, chaotic, friendly, artistic, functional, opulent etc. It can act as a cultural snapshot and first impression for the country itself. Your interview process is the arrival gate for your company.
6 - Make your interviews 50% evaluation, 50% sell
I so often see people try to cram in as much evaluation as possible into interviews. Every minute is spent asking / evaluating, bar a token 10 minute Q&A at the end for the candidate.
Here’s how I see it:
- +-10 minutes of your questions in an hour long interview will have minimal impact on your decision to hire
- +-10 minutes of sell in an hour interview can have a monumental impact on their decision to join
Train your interviewers to have engaging conversations. The outcome of the interview should be two-fold, in equal measure:
- You should come out with a degree of confidence about their abilities
- They should come out thinking “I’d love to work with that person / team”
When it comes to achieving #2 above, Sincerity matters. People can sniff a party line a mile off:
- Don’t write scripts or specific points for interviewers, let them roll with their own style
- Create the space for natural conversation to flow
- Encourage genuine discussions, warm introductions, individual connection (e.g. people staying in touch no matter how the interview goes)
- If you have people who are frustrated / disgruntled at the moment, try not to put them in interviews. They will actively deter people
- Ask for feedback about interviewers from successful candidates, after the process
7- Make a real, individual effort
I don’t care how good AI is getting at mimicking a personalised message from you, or how nice your recruiter is on that first call. You are dealing with people in the tech industry who know what automation and false personalisation looks like.
- Write that first message yourself, injecting your personality
- Tell them why you think this role would be an exceptional fit for them
- Handhold them through the interview process, checking in between stages
- Accommodate their timing needs
- Introduce them to key people as you get later in the stage
Nothing can replicate early relationship building with a prospective future colleague, it acts as an amazing proxy signal of the nature of relationship they could expect when joining. For some people that goes a long way and can swing decisions.
8 - Use probation properly as part of your evaluation
A probation period is IMO the only meaningful test of someones fit for a role. In-situ, performing real tasks, in a natural working environment, collaborating with team members.
This needs to be treated as the final stage of interviewing, not a tickbox exercise. If you do this properly, you can lift some pressure off evaluation at hiring.