How do you hire good people each and everytime? It isn’t an exact science but I’ve gotten better at it.

The process of hiring, in all honesty, is a total beat down to me. Going through the websites and posting the job you’re trying to fill whips me to no end. Tangent: If there were a web service that would allow me to input my job requirements and it post to multiple job sites of my choosing that would be incredible. I’d paid for a service like that! Anyway, so after going through this process over the years I think I’ve finally honed in on a pretty good process for ensuring the hire of quality people. I have a 3-step process when going through the hiring phase:

Step 1 – Mandatory Phone Interview

And I do mean mandatory… I spent alot of time and money going to lunch interviews over the years when I knew within the first ten minutes if I wanted to take this potential candidate to the next level. I’d already read, albeit briefly, their resume and see where their strength & weaknesses are going to be and know what exactly they can and can’t be, skillwise, to my business. What I really want to know are the subtle things: how do they communicate, what kind of personality do they have, what gets them fire up (if possible), etc. I can tell all these things, usually, over the phone in a 15-20 phone interview. It normally goes something like this:

• Personal Intro’s
• Our Company Overview (5 minutes tops)
• What we’re looking for out of the position
• Directed questions about their previous experience
• Ballpark on their salary requirements
• How we proceed from here

Stuff like personality and communication style is extremely important in an consultant business because you, as the owner, can’t be there all the time so you want your personality and style (your personal brand) to be conveyed through your employees. And since I prefer interactions to be more laid back, educational, and even fun at time, I need people that can fit into this mold.

Step 2 – Lunch with employees

That’s right. I get out of the picture for step 2. I let my guys and gals go meet the candidate for lunch. Why? Because they are going to be the ones working with them each and every day. We care very much about our family and culture and bringing anyone into that will inevitably alter it in some way and we want their to be a vibe with the new person. I also like it because it gives the employees a chance to talk about what they really think about the job and it also benefits the candidate in asking questions that they might not want to ask me. After the lunch, I get with my guys to get their take and see if it’s necessary to proceed to the final step.

Step 3 – Wrap up the rest of the details

Last step is where I meet the candidate in person (at my office or perhaps lunch) and we discuss the rest of the critical details (salary offer, benefits, vacation, requirements, etc). Generally, at this point if the candidate is still interested they are ready to get started and I usually request that they respond back within a few days max.

Side point: One step that doesn’t necessarily get done everywhere but that we do is a mandatory drug test and background check prior to hiring (due to our industry, banking, our requirements are a bit more strict).

Again, this is what works for us. I think their is a balance between too many steps in hiring and offering a person a job over the 1st phone call. We think it’s a pretty simple and straightforward process and as long as the candidate understands what is to be expected, they appreciate what we do when trying to build our world class company.