Introduction to hiring

Learn about the importance of using best practices in the hiring process.

Hiring is the most important management decision there is. Managers manage, which means making plans and selecting the people who execute these plans. The better the people, the better the outcome.

Like an orchestra conductor, a manager can only select the right people and support their efforts to do great work. If the people selected are not good at their roles, they will have to be replaced. Replacing a hired person is an extremely expensive process. 

Like most other management decisions, hiring decisions have to be made slowly, based on careful analysis and data, however, there is a big risk and a major tendency to do the opposite – to decide quickly, based on noise and bias. This is human, but this can be avoided. This course helps you learn how.

The Full course “Hiring for Executives” is produced in collaboration with Estonian Business School and is available on Coursera platform. You can register here.

Jump to sections:

• Introduction to hiring.

• The big picture - the best practice hiring process.

• How to analyse a position and write better role descriptions. 

• How to find candidates (sourcing) and conduct initial screening calls.

• How to use hiring interviews to get meaningful and valuable information.

• The importance of reference checking and how to conduct them.

• Making data-based hiring decisions free of bias and HiPPO's opinion.

• The first 100 days of an executive or how to onboard the new hire.

Before covering each best practice hiring process stage in detail, let’s start with understanding the most common hiring mistakes. 

Watch this video below and think, what kind of hiring mistakes do you see being made?

Think about what you saw in the video and answer to the questions below.

Self-check quiz

Did you notice what mistake the hiring manager made?

1. Making a quick decision based only on gut feeling (intuition).
2. Not using enough questions.
3. Using too many questions.
4. He was using brainteasers.

Up to 40% of hiring decisions go wrong when they are based on the traditional method of "gut feelings". While it may seem as though it's possible to know who is right for a role as soon as you meet them, the truth is good hiring decisions are based on well-thought-out hiring processes that collect and utilise measurable data.

This article outlines how to use data in hiring decisions and why it's better to "Hire slow, not fast" by introducing the first four basic steps in starting the hiring process: "Analyse, Define, Evaluate, and Compare".

The next article will look into the best practice hiring process.