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Hiring Processes

Effective Hiring Processes are designed to match the right talent to a specific job opening. They ensure that as many people as possible have a positive candidate experience, no matter if an offer is made or not. A great process will also drive efficiency for the entire hiring team, without introducing undesirable bias that may exclude perfectly valid candidates.

While some companies mandate their managers to follow a rigid process, you may have to create your own process from scratch, or adjust an existing one to fit your needs. This is complicated further by all kinds of role specific hiring practices, such as coding tests for software engineers, portfolio presentations for designers, or case studies for leaders.

The resources below showcase different approaches to building effective hiring processes across various contexts.

Recommended Resources

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18F Engineering Hiring Guide: The folks at 18F published one of the most detailed and inclusive hiring processes to date. If you have never thought that deeply about recruiting top talent, this should be your first read to get an idea about just how many considerations hiring entails. You can clearly see the thinking and decisions that Engineering at 18F considered when reading through the different pages. (30 min read)

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BuzzFeed Design Recruiting: BuzzFeed Design also shared their hiring process with the world. They do a great job setting expectations with candidates when it comes to negotiating compensation or how and why an optional, paid design exercise is required. You can even browse sample interview questions or learn more about their design principles. (10 min read)

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Hiring Planning Template: This Google Sheets template by the Mozilla Firefox User Research team offers an easy-to-use starting point for setting up your hiring process. I can vouch for treating hiring as a collaborative activity and including your colleagues as early as possible to create a shared vision for the role. This may seem like a lot of effort, but will save you time down the road when you may disagree on advancing candidates due to different expectations. (3 min review)

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How We Created a People-First Hiring Experience: Olivia Melman shares a brief intro to shaping the hiring experience at DigitalOcean. I find the hiring metrics and industry benchmarks especially useful as a way to quantify the effectiveness and efficiency of your hiring process. It also serves as a reminder that larger companies have entire teams, strategies, and KPIs that you may be able to lean on as a manager. (5 min read)

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I Got 99 Problems And Your Hiring Practices Are All Of Them (Part 1): Steve Rubin used his frustrations with hiring to channel his inner Jay-Z and bless us with this brilliant 6-part series. I couldn’t agree more with most of his points such as “#1 You don’t spend enough time on the entire process” or “#3 You don’t know what you need”. The whole series will take over an hour, but essentially serves as a hiring primer or refresher for most managers. (19 min read)