Kick it off !

It may come as a surprise to some, but after several years recruiting in-house for technology companies, the most important part of a recruiting process may not be what you think it is.

It is not the sourcing, despite being an opportunity to diversify your talent pool.

It is not the interviews, despite being the time for you to extract key information and pitch your company and projects.

It is not the feedback part, despite increasing drastically your candidate experience and the perception people will have about your company.

It is actually what happens before. Or at least, what is supposed to happen before.

Photo by Keith Johnston on Unsplash

The Kick-off Meeting (or whatever you want to call it)

This could take any form you want (a shared document, a meeting …) as long as it creates the opportunity to exchange before launching any actions.

Many recruiters want to prove their values by being extremely reactive and delivering fast results but then facing an issue : “OK, what do I do next ?”

Many hiring managers come back to recruiters half-way through a process and completely change their requirements : “actually, I realise that what I really need is…”

There is no magic recipe to avoid this — just a method to limit the risks and launching all searches with a kick-off should do the job !

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Let’s start with some questions you might ask yourself ?

“What does a Kick-Off meeting looks like ?”

It is a discussion between the recruiter and the hiring team (anyone involved in the decision process) to define all key elements related to this search,

You should start this chat thinking : “After this meeting, I’m not going to need any back and forth discussion, I know where to go !”

Everyone participates, but the recruiter leads the conversation towards these goals : making managers & stakeholders prepared for these kind of discussions and knowing everything about their needs.

“Isn’t it the job of the hiring team to define all this ?”

Nope !! As the cheesy saying goes “Team work makes the dream work” — if you are an in-house recruiter, this is part of your job description and how you’ll become a recruiting partner.

If you are a recruiter and don’t want to be a “CV sender”, this step will allow you to build the search alongside the hiring team and be a real part of the decision making process as well.

“The hiring team is already sending me a thorough list of requirements and expectations. Is it enough ?”

Not really. It’s time “in-house” recruiters realise what they’ve been hired for (most of the time) : to be the recruitment experts of the company, so let’s act like it !

Requirements and expectations, this is what we call a job description. We need to go beyond that and get any information needed to run this process entirely.

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Then what ? Should we do it EVERY time ?

We should think that — it’s not because a role is titled the same that goals, expectations and projects will be the same. Once you’ve done the groundwork, this will become a short & efficient conversation to define the potential differences with the previous kick-off meetings.

In a fast growing environment, you are evolving with people managers who are either first time managers, or recently hired externally to bring an expertise around team leadership. In both contexts, this exercise helps to build trustful relationships with your counterparts as well as helping them develop reflexes for the next time they’re thinking of adding a new role into their teams (potentially even on designing their team structure).

Actually, in even smaller companies which do not have dedicated recruiting resources, this means the possibility to make sure you allocate resources correctly and that you hire candidates the right way.

If you think that this adds a lot of time to your busy schedules, then think about how much time a wrong hire or an inefficient recruiting process is going to cost : worth a shot ?

So what do we cover during a kick-off meeting ?

First, while you could deliver this kick-off in many ways, it is recommended to have a meeting with the hiring team. It will only increase your chances to establish a work partnership, better understand each other’s methodologies / expectations as well as educate them around how recruiting is done in your company (philosophy, inclusion & diversity …).

Below is a (non-exhaustive) list of questions you could follow or get inspired from to run your kick-off — yes this means that you will have to come prepared:

Once the meeting done — you follow up with a shared document gathering all information to make sure that you are all aligned and ready to go in the same direction !

Team

• Why do you need to fill this role ? What is the context of this hiring ? Is it an incremental position or a replacement ?
• What is the goal of this team (if not known so far) ?
• What are the perspectives of evolution for someone in this role ?
• Any specific ramp-up phase to set this person up for success ?
• With whom is this person going to work / interact with regularly ?
• Who’s managing this person ? What kind of communication type should we expect internally ?

Role

• Top 3 main tasks / duties / goals
• Any specific projects handled by this person ?
• How to assess the performance of this person ? What are the key metrics ?
• Is there a bonus impacting the performance? What percentage ? Based on what ?
• What is the budget for this role ? What is the compensation of people on similar roles ?
• What are the best selling points about this role ?
• What could be frustrating for someone about this role ?

Profile

• Who are the top performers you’ve met across your career on such a role ? What made them more successful ?
• What does someone need to be successful here ? In other words what are the “must haves” (let’s keep the list as short as possible)?
• What’s the level of seniority expected ? Why ? What’s the difference between this level and other levels in the same team ?
• Any skillset your team doesn’t have / lacks of which would be great to add ?
• What really is critical, culture wise, to be successful in your team ?

Search

• Any idea of job titles which exists matching this search other than… ?
• Any idea of companies / industries where we could find this kind of profile to inspire ourselves from ?
• Who are the top performers currently in your team ? Why ? Use the results to orient the search

Process

• What would you like us (recruiters) to focus on during the recruiter screen ? What about during each of the other steps ?
• What would be the process ? Which team should be involved ? Anyone in mind who absolutely should participate ?
• How many candidates are you expecting to meet with to make a call ?
• How do you technically assess the candidates ? (Assignment, …) What will you expect from it ? Who’s reviewing it ?

If you have any tips or tricks to improve this kick-off meeting, more than happy to get your thoughts. tom.nivol@gmail.com.