Time to Review Your Hiring Process

The conventional thinking is that it is easier to add top IT talent to an organization during an economic downturn, as layoffs have forced many good people onto the market, and others are eager to jump ship to any company that is actually growing or doing interesting things in IT.

There are alternative theories out there, including Auren Hoffman’s suggestion that it is actually harder to get top talent now, because more C-players are being let go, thus skewing the talent ratio and creating more “noise” in your hiring process:

In troubled economic times, anyone can get laid off, but a disproportionate number of layoffs tend to fall on C-players. This is because they are the lowest performing people in a company and there generally are more C-players at a company than any other caliber.

I believe Auren’s theory may hold true for smaller organizations, where a leadership team can closely manage the RIF process with little HR/Legal involvement or complications, hopefully raising the bar for their entire team during the process.

Within larger enterprises, the intricacies of a large RIF process, the likelihood that it will be driven in part by HR and Legal protocols, the need to manage legal and PR risk, and real inconsistencies in the review/grading process across large teams may push more A/B players out into the market than one would imagine. Add to this the fact that A/B talent is always more likely to be looking whenever a company is under financial pressure or cutting back on interesting IT work.

Regardless of the ratio of A/B/C players you are seeing in the market right now, chances are that you are getting more resumes in the mail than you have historically received for any openings you have. Now might be a good time to review your hiring process to ensure that it is supporting your goals, and make changes where necessary.

Hiring Criteria

What are the common traits that you judge your candidates by, and should you make changes now to that criteria? What are the historical “nice-to-haves” that you might be able to focus on now that you have a larger pool to choose from? In addition to the necessary technical expertise, are you more likely to find candidates now that have:

• A higher level of passion that will rub off on others in your team?
• The ability to change your culture for the better?
• A history of extracurricular activities (projects, speaking, articles) that may set a good example for your team?

Hiring Process

What does the hiring process look like within your organization, and where is its weakest link? How will a flood of resumes affect that process?

Do you have faith in the HR manager(s) involved in the process? If the HR team does buzzword screening of resumes or initial interviews, will this process still work when you begin receiving a multiple of the resumes you are used to for an open position? Many IT leaders defer completely to their HR partners for these tasks, even when they are uncomfortable with the hiring process in place. Could the current situation and the volume of resumes being received be your opportunity to work with your HR partner and design a new process that you are more comfortable with?

How involved are your IT managers in the process? Do they usually sit back and wait for HR to pass them a culled list, or are they screening the inflow of resumes? Its an oft-repeated phrase that “A people hire A people, and C people hire C people.” Are you trusting your hiring process to C-level managers?

A-level managers: are much more likely to identify talent that will rapidly be at their own level, perhaps even challenging them in positive ways; will look for people that will raise the bar for an entire team, move to other leadership positions or perhaps be a part of your succession plans.

C-level managers: are more likely to view the hiring process through a “threat management” lens of sorts, where they will prefer candidates that are so weak as to never be a threat to them personally, will not push them or the team, will not challenge the status quo, etc. So you get more of the same.

This is why in large organizations, you often see clumps of excellent teams with multiple strong players that you can promote from, and other teams that only raise to the level of their weak manager.

Pay Grades

Do you subscribe to the notion that there is little actual variation in staff with similar titles, (as is often suggested by HR leaders), or do you hold to the idea that there is in fact large variation in the value of staff at similar titles (see Mythical Man Month, Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering, Smart and Get Things Done) which would suggest that great staff have anywhere from 3X to 28X the value of your worst staff?

Do you provide for small or large variation within your pay ranges to align with your own theory? Which of the following describes your organization?

1. Little variation within pay ranges or similar titles
2. Large variation within pay ranges and titles, with the goal of matching compensation to ability, and value to the organization
3. Little variation within ranges/titles, but with higher-than-market averages, with the expectation that only strong people are hired, so it is justified
4. #3 above, with the unfortunate reality that you do not have all strong people, regardless of what your managers keep telling you, hence you are over market and not getting appropriate value for your staff investment

Reshuffle the Deck

In many large organizations, a resignation is automatically turned into a similar job requisition process with little thought. If you are lucky enough to be able to fill open requisitions right now, do you want to take the opportunity to reshuffle the deck in the process? Every opening may be a chance to question the position you have historically held, and discuss whether a change in role would better position you for success after this downturn ends. What new threats will you be reacting to? What new skills are needed?

Your Involvement

How involved are you personally in the recruitment and hiring process? In a large team, being involved in each candidate review may be impossible, but are you involved at the end? Do you meet with key candidates for a few minutes before an offer is made to give them a chance to ask you about your vision? It may be tempting to believe that any paying job will be enough to attract top talent in this market. Not so, and A players may still have multiple offers to choose from. Most A players will tell you that they have taken positions in their career with lessor compensation because of the quality of the work, the vision of the leader or the team they are working with.  What’s your differentiator?  If not compensation, is it your vision as articulated to the candidate?

Whether you are hiring during this economic downturn or not, this might be a great opportunity for you to review and optimize your recruitment/hiring process to ensure that you will be getting more than your share of the A players out there once things pick up again.

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Tagged as: Compensation, Hiring, IT Staffing, Management & Governance