This is the weekly Careers newsletter.
Déjà Leonard is a copywriter and freelance journalist based in Calgary.
You’ve found the ideal candidate, and you’re ready to make an offer. You just need to wait for a few internal approvals, ensure the budget is secured and give your teams a few days to write up the offer letter. Later that week the candidate lets you know they have already accepted another offer from one of your competitors.
Losing a candidate because it takes too long is a common story. Data from staffing services specialist Robert Half shows 92 per cent of hiring managers say they have missed out on a good hire in the past year, with more than a third attributing it to a slow process.
Jacob Lanyadoo, president of Montreal consulting company TechBonjour, said he sees companies of all sizes struggle with hiring quickly.
“Hiring with speed and missed opportunities are historically some of the biggest problems that we have with our clients,” Mr. Lanyadoo said.
Making changes to your hiring practices
TechBonjour helps mid-to-late-stage founders and business leaders scale efficiently and effectively, and have played a role in building different teams for businesses.
In one example, TechBonjour worked with a company that had about 45 employees. They had raised $300-million through venture capital and wanted to double their team.
“Everyone’s busy with their jobs and what would happen is we would give very quality candidates to these hiring managers, who would then take forever to book a call,” Mr. Lanyadoo said.
Something needed to change, so TechBonjour started working closely with the chief people officer to make internal shifts.
This included a mandated daily stand-up meeting twice a week for hiring managers to report on progress, booking dedicated time in hiring managers calendars to make calls and putting a solid service-level agreement in place that held hiring managers accountable to calling qualified candidates within 72 hours.
Usually the company took six weeks to get a candidate to the second interview. After making internal changes, Mr. Lanyadoo saw contracts being signed and people being hired in less than six weeks.
Tips for hiring the right people, faster
Mr. Lanyadoo said to set goals, but don’t make them arbitrary as it often leads to “that kind of paralysis by analysis,” he said.
Many companies have rules around how many people need to apply and how many need to be interviewed, which can slow down the process unnecessarily.
“You need to hire the person that you like, whenever you find them, even if that happens to be the very first person you interview,” he said.
Second, if you’re a hiring manager, you may not be able to bring large-scale change to hiring practices, but you can hold yourself and others in your organization accountable.
Whether it be through documents, similar to the service-level agreement listed above, or following up with HR or recruiters to give them feedback and tell them what you need to keep the process moving forward.
This helps “create accountability in both directions,” he said.
Lastly, start early.
“One of the things that I’m telling all of my clients right now is if you have roles that you know you need to fill over the next three to six months, hire them now,” Mr. Lanyadoo said.
He said that companies, especially in tech, have overfired and will eventually need to rehire.
“I think by the end of the year we’re going to be in a position where that amazing talent that is very uncharacteristically available right now will all be scooped up,” he said.
What I’m reading around the web
- Urgency culture, or the idea that we must always be doing something and leave little time for rest, is present in many workplaces and seeping into our free time. This article from Well+Good provides three tips for combatting urgency culture and ensuring the line between personal and work life doesn’t become too blurred.
- Austin, Texas is known as the live music capital of the world, and there’s an interesting nonprofit helping the city keep its musical reputation. Read how the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians (HAAM) helps musicians obtain health insurance and creates thriving communities along the way.
- Tech conference Collision just wrapped up and they shared some of the top insights from day one of the conference. Keep reading to see what business leaders are saying about ChatGPT, sustainability and the future of advertising.
- Would you trade in your desk job and become a freediver? More women are escaping the Korean work culture and joining a community of mostly elders that comprise the majority of the haenyeo (“women of the sea”) community, as detailed in this Guardian article.
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