Hiring - Risky Business

Having been a hiring manager for eight years I know the difficulties. There are many unknowns. I mean how well can you get to know someone over two or three interviews, background checks and reference checks? Obviously the references are stacked in the candidate's favour. Obviously the candidate is on their best behaviour (generally!). So how does one decide? Ultimately, for me, it was a gut feeling. Most times I was right but I did make mistakes.

One of the challenges is filtering candidates. I could not, for example, possibly interview all eight hundred candidates I received for the ten new grad positions I had to fill. So I needed easy filters. A grade point below a B and you were out. No summer or co-op work terms and you were out. Any spelling mistakes? Yes? Out! A CV that is not well organised (this is subjective)....out! And so on. So I ended up with a stack of CVs of interview worthy candidates. Fifty were interviewed and ten were hired. Yep, it is a tough and very competitive world out there.

I am sure there were many great candidates that did not make it through the sieve. Hopefully most were hired by other organisations. I imagine many have gone on to be great careers. With perfect hindsight I likely would have made different decisions and hired a few of them. But that is the risk of hiring. You don't really know who you are getting until they show up at work and you get to know them. That is the risk.

Without risk, though, come many lost opportunities. No hiring means no growth, no new projects, few new and innovative ideas. It means stagnation and can mean dead wood and rot take root in an organisation. New hires bring excitement, a certain amount of naivety. They have less baggage, their minds free of your existing processes. It challenges the status quo and causes long time employees to realise there are other people out there that can do their job - maybe even a little better.

So hire....regularly. Challenge yourself to. Update your company, rotate staff and embrace the risk.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

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