Hiring staff is hard. Hiring software developers is particularly challenging. Despite our best efforts, positions are frequently left open for weeks and months. Teams spend countless hours screening resumes, giving interviews, and reviewing coding samples. The process is time consuming and expensive. And here's the tough part to admit: it is practically certain that the person you hired was not the best candidate to come across your desk.
Your hiring process is broken.
The problem is we are chasing unicorns. When I was working with PowerInbox, we had adopted a widely published recruiting process called WHO. The process is built on the premise of finding and hiring "A Players". But I know first hand that the company did not even attract "A Players" let alone hire them. In tech, the top talent go to top tier firms, or here in New York top talent goes to Wall Street. That means other companies are looking for an ideal employee that they will never find and in the process will pass over very talented candidates.
But chasing unicorns is just part of the problem. It is likely that your process involves too many people, and gives too many of them veto power over candidates. I myself am guilty of setting up a hiring process with too many interviewers. The idea is to give the current team ownership on the hire. Unfortunately the more people involved in a hiring decision, the more likely a candidate is rejected. At issue is basic human nature; it is easier to rule someone out than rule someone in.
There is a conventional thinking that fuels these practices. The thinking is that it is very expensive and disruptive to make a "bad hire" and therefore every effort should be made to prevent bad hires. While I would never suggest that companies hire unqualified candidates, it is apparent that the typical hiring process goes well beyond the point of marginal return. In fact, I will put forth that many "bad hires" weren't bad hires at all, but instead are examples of bad management.
It's not hopeless. You can fix this.
Empower your hiring manager. Hiring is not a task suited for committees. And yet that is how most companies hire people. When I interviewed with Amazon, I spoke with a dozen of their team. In my experience it is common for candidates to speak with at least six individuals. It is very difficult for large hiring teams to come to consensus on a given candidate, especially when there are many choices. It is common for "analysis paralysis" to result. Interview by committee is also very taxing on both the company and the candidates.
Set a limit on resumes. Be realistic. If you receive one hundred applications for a senior software engineer, what is the probability that one of those candidates will be a productive employee for you. It's a near certainty, and yet we are tempted to keep screening resumes because someone else could be better. Someone else may be better, but we will never know. You will never know how any of the candidates you pass over will compare to the person you hired. So you must take that fear out of the equation. Instead of leaving a position open until the right person comes along, set a fixed size of the candidate pool that you will consider and stop accepting applications when that number is reached.
Narrow your finalists based on objective skills. A typical hiring process starts with a recruiter spending a half hour on the phone with candidates that look good on paper. If you limited your resumes to 100 you will likely want to have screening calls with at least the top twenty prospects. That's ten hours spent on the phone, and nearly as much time to summarize and rank the candidates. And it's not time well spent. Instead, test the individuals on the key skills first. The test should be difficult enough to truly separate the skilled from the un-skilled.
Here's the advantage of testing first: you will have a high degree of confidence in every candidate you speak with. Take the top ten and schedule a limited set of conversations with each of them (as described in the next paragraph).
Limit the number of conversations. You would think that the more time spent with the candidate, by more people, would supply better information. In the book Talking to Strangers Malcom Galdwell highlights research that demonstrates more time does not equal better judgement. On the contrary, more time with the candidate will often result in worse decisions. My suggestion is to hold no more than four conversations. One with the recruiter. One with the hiring manager. One with a peer, and one with a subordinate. If the job is not managerial, then hold two peer conversations.
Run a "Democratic Lottery". The democratic lottery is another concept borrowed from the research of Malcom Gladwell (and described here). For your process, let the hiring manager narrow the pool down to three or four candidates and then randomly pick one. That's right. Randomly select the finalist.
While a lottery is not a perfect system, it has advantages over the typical hiring process. First, employees selected by lottery would be more representative of the population as a whole, resulting in a diverse workforce. Second, you are unlikely to pass-over highly qualified candidates for those that "feel right". Finally, your process is faster, less expensive, and far less stressful on the organization.
So here it is. Review a specific number of resumes. Test their skills first. Hold a small number conversations with your top ten. Have the hiring manager pick three or four. Randomly select the finalist. I assure you that your hiring will be faster and your new hires as good or better than before.
