Recruitment is an Art form (Recruitment Part 1/3)
Disclaimer: Some regions and countries have specific laws around recruitment, including what has to be advertised, how it has to be advertised, and what the process needs to be. Most organizations will also have their own internal policies that you will need to adhere to. It's extremely important that you know the laws and policies that you need to adhere to and follow them before implementing any advice you read on the internet or in a book.
I'm a big believer that recruitment is an art form, not a science, and that many places overcomplicate recruitment to the point of absurdity and still don't achieve what they set out to do.
You are always going to get too many applications, you are always going to run the risk of hiring a dud, and you are always going to have to make a tough choice between multiple people that you like for only one role.
Seventeen interviews, four coffee dates, and nine practical tests later, those risks are still going to be the exact same; they can rarely be mitigated. The more complicated your recruitment process, the more you risk alienating or losing the right candidate. It's also a heap of work for you and your team; do not put anyone, including yourself, through additional work just 'because'.
What matters is that you understand what your team needs, how you are going to assess that, and what you need to get to the point where you can make a decision you are comfortable with.
It sounds reductive, but you aren't choosing a life partner or even a house. A new staff member is a bit like a new piece of furniture; it needs to meet your needs and work with the house (team), but at the end of the day, you'll make a decision based on what's available, and it's not a decision that you'll have to live with forever.
On the other hand, you also don't always need to make a decision right there and then. Yes, Â your team may be feeling the pinch because one of your amazing staff members has left, but if recruitment doesn't provide you with someone you are comfortable with, then wait a few months and try again. It takes time for a staff member to come up to speed, even longer if they aren't the right fit, not to mention a member of your team (or several) will be training them, which is an additional efficiency loss, so sometimes it's best to wait.
Who does the team need?
There's a fallacy that when you lose someone amazing, especially a high-performing staff member, you need to replace that person with a clone of them.
When you do have a vacancy, whether it be through attrition or team expansion, that is the time to review the people in your team and see if this is an opportunity to change how you position people.
You have been given an opportunity to shuffle people around, move people into promotions, or even just change your team's working structure (not in a re-structuring way). Work through some scenarios or combinations, and don't be afraid to include other people in the conversation, depending on the size of your team—your management, your senior staff, or even your stakeholders. Then, once you've properly assessed the opportunity this vacancy has afforded you, you can figure out what gap you need to fill. Is it a junior role, a senior role, a technical role, someone with a very specific skill set, or multiple?
I'd also like to prompt you to be realistic in your thinking around recruitment. I hate to say it, but very rarely are teams doing the most cutting-edge stuff in the industry; therefore, you do not need to hire the most talented human being in the field; their skills will be wasted, and in my experience, controversial opinion incoming, these people tend to excel in the technical department while lacking in the empathy and pragmatism departments. Sure, you might need good technical people or people with strong skillsets, but soft skills should never be overlooked.
This can also be the time to assess whether there's budget for you to increase the team size if that's what you really need. If you've gone through this exercise and can properly articulate that you need more staff (especially if a super star who clearly did the work of five people left), then why not give it a shot?
While budgets and team structures are often locked in by a lot of bureaucracy and planning that has already occurred, you'd be surprised how a well-crafted argument can work in your favor. Remember, the company has its goals, and those goals are under threat every time a team is not performing to the needed standard. If you can link your needs to the execution of the strategy, especially a failure to meet those goals given your existing team's output, then you would have made a compelling argument. If there genuinely is no budget, then you've done your due diligence in communicating that the organization's goals are now at risk, which is still a win. Communicating risk is an important way to mitigate fallout on your team, and you should be doing it constantly.
Who does the team not need?
Now that you have done the work to figure out what the team needs, you need to assess what the team does not need. Every person you hire, especially if you are doing a lot of hiring over a period of time (I once hired twenty staff in a year), has the ability to alter the team dynamic. You can't protect a dynamic forever; it changes constantly, and you should be prepared to roll with that. One minute you might have a very social team, and the next you might have a team that would rather go home to their family than stay for work drinks. You might go through phases where every single person in the team is 100% collaborative and communicative, then you might have a phase where people cluster into groups or cliques. These things change constantly.
However, what you need to be cognizant of is whether change is for the better or worse. Sometimes you do need to hire someone who will challenge the status quo and speak up a bit; that might be the breath of fresh air your team needs to break out of some old habits, especially if they are stuck in the 'we've already tried that' loop of thinking. However, don't hire five of these people, or keep adding them if you've got them. You need a team with diverse communication and thinking styles, and the more diverse the team, the better.
You also need diversity in gender, ethnicity, and work background. That isn't to suggest you ignore some good candidates just to hire someone diverse for the sake of it, but to be aware of your team's biases in this area.
Please do be careful; hiring, for example, one woman into a team of all men could result in your new staff member feeling outnumbered, and if you don't do the work to support them and challenge the team to change, then that staff member might leave quickly, and you're back at square one. This is not to say you shouldn't hire diverse staff, but you need to first understand the current makeup of your team, especially if it is a team of all men, before just throwing some diversity in there to make yourself feel better. The goal is to not end up in that scenario in the first place, but if you do, you need to be smart about how you go about changing it. If you are in this position, I suggest seeking external support from HR to help you support any new staff you bring into the team.
I'd also be weary of hiring a group of people from the same workplace. I've seen it time and time again where multiple people or entire teams are hired from the same workplace, either due to layoffs or a key member moving. In those scenarios, those people often import their dynamic and culture, and while sometimes that can be a good thing, it can also be disruptive as those new members will be unwilling to change their existing dynamic; it's a habit to them, and with fellow colleagues around, it gets reinforced.
I touched on this above, but try to balance out your team. You can't have too many senior staff members; likewise, too many junior staff members. You need to have a mix so that way too many people aren't clambering for the same promotion at the same time, because you'll only be able to give one and the rest will feel slighted and might look for other positions elsewhere. You need juniors for seniors to mentor, so that they learn how to mentor, and you need juniors to pick up some of the weird and less-than-rewarding work that goes around.
Quick note re: graduates: graduate employees are to be respected; too many people view hiring a graduate or multiple as some free labor source. Grads require a lot of handholding and investment from your team. Your role in hiring a graduate is to not only teach them the role and grow their hard and soft skills, but also teach them how to operate in a corporate environment. Only hire a graduate if you have the capacity on the team to give them that time and energy.
Closing thoughts
I'm aware I've given you a lot of dos and don'ts and not a lot of substance. The following two parts of this section cover the more tangible stuff, like writing a job advertisement and interviewing candidates, but I really mean it when I say recruitment is a bit of an art form. You do need to do it a few times to get the hang of it, and unfortunately, it is one of those things that doesn't happen all the time, so it's hard to get practiced at it. In saying that, every time you have been interviewed, something you have done more of, is a chance to learn. What did they do right? What did they do wrong? You can even ask to sit in on interviews other people are doing in the company to get practiced if they allow it. Recruitment is a process that you should approach mindfully, make time for it, and think really hard about what sort of person the team would benefit from and who they wouldn't.
Feel free to reach out if you have a question, all my links are in my Linktree and if you want to show some extra gratitude you can buy me a coffee through my Linktree.
Next Article: Writing a Job Advert, Shortlisting, & Interviewing (2/3)