Recruiting for high growth

3 things I learned while recruiting and hiring at Opower

At Opower, we’ll do a lot of hiring in 2014. A massive amount of work for the recruiters, sourcers, and hiring managers. We can make our company much better by hiring people who are stronger than we already have, or we can make our company much weaker by not paying attention to quality or by missing our hiring goals. Here are three things I learned while doing a lot of recruiting and hiring at Opower.

1. Know your weaknesses; hire and interview around them — There are lots of ways to figure out what you are good at and where you need help. You can ask people, or take a test like the Insights Discovery profile, or just look for gaps in your own resume. The worst team builders are the ones who don’t realize that they need help on their team. Hire people who complement each other. Complement your own interviewing by having others on your interviewing team with different perspectives and tactics. Use a scorecard.
2. Be accountable for improving the quality of your team by recruiting — It can be scary for some people to hire individuals who are smarter or more skilled than they are, but this is what you should aspire to do. Never ever hire anyone for a job who will not be better at doing the job than you would be. You should be able to upgrade the quality of your team constantly through recruiting, as long as the prospects at your company look brighter and brighter. And if you are a manager of managers, it is on you to ensure that quality goes up and that you are setting a standard by saying no to hires who everyone else wants but who aren’t at the standard you desire.
3. Over-invest in recruiting — Recruiting is at least 50% on the hiring manager. I’ve seen a lot of hiring managers not realize this, point fingers at recruiters, fall behind on hiring, and then miss their objectives. If you are hiring, you need to consult with your recruiter, build trust with them about what good talent means for your positions, and just expect that you will need to spend more time than you first think on things like outreach, referrals, interviewing, and even sourcing. Recruiters have a tough job and are under a magnifying glass for hitting goals and meeting metrics. They need your over-investment and partnership.