3 Things To Look At If You Need Help Closing Your Req

Let’s talk about open requisitions. The problem is that interview panels and stakeholders involved in approving offers are often misaligned on the requirements, scope of work, and previous achievements needed to qualify for the position.

As employers, we’ve all been there, a candidate being senior in one place could mean something very different when they switch companies.

Actually, I think the problem that exists is that employers don’t have a framework they’re using to recruit. I see many teams start engaging with external recruiting agencies and internal recruiters asking to see resumes before doing the introspective work to dissect how hiring someone will impact a specific need on the team and develop a coherent plan to interview the position. Sound familiar?

Here are three things you can do to help close your req:

#1 — Create an Alignment Doc

What’s an alignment document? Well, it’s a simple way of saying that we need to document the hiring process, stakeholders involved, as well as the qualifications of your ideal candidate. You may be in a situation where you’re trying to hire several software engineers for your team. How do you make the determination of what skills are required for Backend vs. Front End Engineers? What are the technical skills you need someone to bring to the table now vs. skills that can be built through training programs. That’s where the alignment document comes into play. Here’s a few things to consider aligning on before you start recruiting:

• Skills( What skills are required for the role? C++, GO, MySQL, React, AWS)
• Nice to have’s but not required (We’d love a full-stack engineer but understand they’re hard to find)
• Determine Trade off’s (If I found an engineer that was great at Front End UI but lacked the background in systems design, I’d be willing to make an exception to hire)
• Attributes(Are they collaborative or are they a lone wolf? Is this person adaptable to change and be successful in our environment?)
• Achievements (What previous accolades do we look for in someone’s work history?)
• Years of experience (Do the years of experience someone play a major factor in the hiring decision?)
• Educational requirements (Is a CS degree required? Or can they be self-trained?)
• Interview Panel and Process (Let’s document the interview process and panel up front too so everyone’s on the same page, candidates and interviewers)
• 30–60–90 Day Road Map (What’s expected of this person in the first 90 days?)
• What are the opportunities available for this person should they “hit it out of the park “after 1 year?

Why is this is so important even though it looks so simple? Well, you need to be strategic and inclusive about your recruiting, and this clarifies your hiring bar and communicates how you level candidates, sort of like a guiding light. Not only does this get everyone on the same page, but think about the alignment document like this:

Imagine you’re planning a 3-month vacation with 7 family members. You need to have an itinerary laid out that everyone can follow that’s detailed and leaves little room for interpretation but also provides for flexibility if the weather changes and the beach vacation you were considering switches from Bali to Boracay one month into your journey through Southeast Asia.

This is no different with aligning your team for a requisition. If you’re the hiring manager socialize the alignment document with your team before you start recruiting to make sure everyone is clear on the role that they play and agrees with the direction you’re headed.

This is the most important step in your recruiting process that results in significant time savings and improvement in the quality of candidates in your funnel.

And after you do that, there’s another to-do that will help you even more.

#2 — Analyze your internal recruiting data

Chances are you’re probably using some sort of ATS system like Greenhouse and Lever. But, are you looking at the data that you get out of it?

The key is to look at the recruiting funnel for the position you have open. What you’re looking for specifically is the conversion rates between each stage of the hiring process.

Here’s what a problematic funnel looks like for a hypothetical Senior Front End Engineer:

Here’s why it’s problematic:

Take a look at conversion rate on the Hiring Manager Phone Screen stage and the 1st onsite stages. A 64% pass-through rate indicates that the recruiting team and the Hiring Manager are well aligned. This data is even more useful if you’re using technology platforms like Hacker Rank to perform coding challenges which automate technical assessments producing both consistency and efficiency in the recruiting process.

Where you see a problem in the recruiting funnel is the Hiring Manager Phone Screen and 1st Onsite stages where you go from 10 candidates to 1 candidate. This means you’re batting 10% which wouldn’t get you very far in the Major Leagues. This is a clear sign there’s a misalignment between your recruiting team and the hiring manager who are doing the upfront sourcing and screening and your interview panel who are performing a well-rounded assessment. If you’re seeing this pattern, pause on your recruiting efforts.

To solve this, after each interview, you need to debrief with the interview panel and talk about their assigned focus area, their evaluation of the candidate’s performance, and whether they felt this person was qualified for the role. Make sure to include your recruiting team so they can hear from the team on what’s causing the misalignment and pivot on their recruiting strategy.

The hiring manager should lead this discussion since he’s outlined the vision of the team and role. This is a great opportunity to calibrate amongst the team to iron out any discrepancies in expectations for the role amongst the team and use the time to identify opportunities to coach junior team members on interview best practices. Here are a few questions to think about:

• How well is your interview panel being prepped?
• Is everyone assigned focus areas before the interview? Or are people scrambling before an interview asking the same questions about culture fit?
• Is everyone aware that our expectations for a Front End Engineer who’s proficient in HTML5, CSS, and React are different than for Backend Engineers where we would typically ask questions about service-oriented architecture and microservices?
• If there’s a question about the candidate’s technical aptitude, should we review and leverage the technical assessment performed through Hacker Rank in our debrief? Or should we bring this person back in for a second round interview to ensure there’s not a false negative in our assessment process?
• Would this person be a fit for a more junior role or one with different scope altogether given their admission that they really want an outward facing role that’s customer-focused?
• Are we creating an amazing candidate experience? Or is the feedback we’re receiving on Glassdoor heavily weighted negatively which is causing a drop off in interest of top talent?

These are all things you should think about identifying where misalignment is happening. High performing teams that I’ve worked with have made offers 33% — 50% of the time they brought people onsite.

And there’s one last thing you should consider. It’s what candidates are saying about the role and the company.

#3 Ask the team: how competitive is our employee value proposition?

There are several dimensions that people are looking at when they consider a new role. Here are just a few:

• Financial Compensation (How competitive is the salary and equity compensation vs. our competitors? If you’re a startup, are you losing candidates to large companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple?)
• Benefits (If you’re offering lower financial compensation, are you investing more in benefits like education reimbursement and training to be more competitive? 401k, unlimited vacation, catered lunch?)
• Work-Life Flexibility (That 3 hour round trip from San Francisco to Mt.View can be brutal! Do you offer your employees the opportunity to work from home 1–2 days a week?)
• Hiring Manager (Are you a manager or a leader? Working for a leader that’s building skills for the future is rare and can be one of your biggest selling points to a candidate. )
• Industry Focus (Are we breaking new ground in an industry that doesn’t exist? If so, sell it!)
• Growth Opportunity At the Company (Where do you see this person growing after they tackle the 6 month project you’ve sold them?)
• Performance Management (How does your team recognize high performance?)
• Culture (What makes your leadership team, people, culture, and mission differentiated from the flock of companies circling for the same talent?)

This is what I mean by “employee value proposition.” What differentiates your employee value proposition from the other 600 startups that are hiring 100% remotely or 350 companies that received funding this week?

Think about it from the candidate’s point of view. All equal, the position could be paid within the same salary band, but what makes your company unique?

You have to be able to articulate your value and differentiate yourself in a crowded market (it’s not about free snacks, HR led team bonding, and ping pong tables). You also have to uncover the candidate’s motivations to sell them on joining your team and even possibly build a role around that person.

Getting Closer to Filling That Req

If you take this approach, you’ll have a clear understanding of where there is misalignment with the stakeholders involved or with the external market. By using a collaborative data-driven approach, you can be strategic and systematic about recruiting as opposed to reactive and transactional. If you include everyone in the recruiting strategy, people are going to feel empowered in how the company is growing, and you’ll build future leadership capabilities of your teams.

What have you done that has better closed the gap on your reqs and increased your speed to hire? Are there tools or products that you’re using that have increased the diversity in your recruiting funnel? I’m always learning about industry best practices and would love to hear what’s worked or what’s not worked for you.

Contact me:

Email: derek@mytalentaccelerator.com

Twitter: @dstyle00

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