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I accidentally the hiring manager.
ZeitgeistHeist
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm a designer for a firm in D.C.. Or, well, I was -- for reasons that simultaneously totally do and totally don't make sense, I've been promoted from designer to designer-plus-hiring-manager.
A decade of critiquing projects and working for startups gives me an edge, I think, on the interviewing process itself and being able to select the right people once I find them, but that last part is a doozy. Is it enough to post ads on Indeed, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor? Am I going to need to poach people? How does that even work?
A decade of critiquing projects and working for startups gives me an edge, I think, on the interviewing process itself and being able to select the right people once I find them, but that last part is a doozy. Is it enough to post ads on Indeed, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor? Am I going to need to poach people? How does that even work?
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Another place you might find ongoing advice/place to vent is the SE job thread.
In my field, your position would qualify more under "recruiter". Are you actively responsible for finding new hires, or are you there to make the final decisions once the candidates have been presented to you?
If you are responsible for finding talent, there's usually a few ways that you can go about it, but typically your HR department should have some standards you should follow. Most companies tend to have a "Careers" section on their website where you can list open positions. LinkedIn is the goto for most active recruiting these days. Additionally, you can search your current talent pool for recommendations and references.
And while job fairs aren't the primary way of recruiting any longer, they are still a useful and potent tool for putting the work req into the public sphere. They give you a good opportunity to meet new folks and talk about the position with candidates who might not have been interested otherwise.
1. It depends on how the role is designed. Recruiters generally poach/find people, Hiring Managers generally are the people who do detailed interviews (not screening interviews, that's recruiter) and make the decisions around hiring. Work with your partners/management team on how they're breaking out the roles/responsibilities.
2. Once you have a candidate, there's a few aspects to interviewing I'd recommend thinking about.
A. Skills - These are fairly important (likely moreso in your field), but many skills can be taught, so make sure you appropriately level set what expectations are for entry level, junior and senior designers (or whatever your breakout is) so you're fairly evaluating everyone's capability vs. the expectation.
B. Culture/Attitude - This is generally the most important piece and the shorthand is - hire happy people who are endlessly curious about their world (IMO). Long hand - we use behavioral interviewing to help inform culture fit (google it if you need descriptions). You'll want to spend some time thinking about your firm and understanding where your culture is now and where you want it to be. Hiring is part of how you close that gap.
Are you an industry leader who burns the candle at both ends and expect your people to do the same?
Are you a supportive organization that believes success is a team effort?
Are you flat, hierarchy focused or something different?
I have certain opinions on these, but EVERY COMPANY IS DIFFERENT. Your compensation methodology (IE - heavy salary vs. heavy bonus), workflow and structure should all speak to these culture values.
Why am I talking so much about this? The people you hire SHOULD be immediate fits culture-wise, even if their skills aren't 100% there, as that will help ease transitions and close the gaps you and your management team see in the organization. Culture clashes are expensive effort and morale wise and ultimately lead to less successful hires.
3. Remember that hires are a two-way street - especially in design, you need to be prepped on what your firm is offering to employees to complement what you want out of them. Best advice is to be honest, as any lie will probably lead to conflict as they'll find out once they start anyway.
4. Personal thoughts - Hire people smarter and more motivated than you whenever you can, as they'll ultimately reflect well on you and help the company as a whole.
The good/bad thing is that I am both the recruiter and the final decision. Granted that the company's principal could foreseeably decide not to hire someone I recommend, they've promised exactly the opposite. I have entirely free reign here, though I want to lean heavily on my colleague's impressions.
The company is a small post-startup -- maybe twenty folks total -- and I'm one of the newer (and youngest) employees. I've given a lot of feedback on our hiring process, particularly with concern for cultural fit, and I'm sure the combination of being voluntarily involved and also "young and hip" landed me in this position.
So is posting ads on LinkedIn the best route? Is reaching out to people directly also an effective option? I'd rather not do the latter, but obviously I'd also prefer a larger selection.
Question - how do people in your industry connect with each other? If there's an industry rag, that's a good option. I would say experiment with all and see where your best candidates come from.
The other piece I'd make sure you start standing up is to setup some infrastructure around culture, workflow and workforce planning, as from posting to candidate starting can be 6+ months if you're picky (be picky), and you want to be posting up the jobs before there's a critical need, which means you'll need to be plugged into the projects and their forecasted need for people.
Good news: this is great exposure and opportunity, both career wise and making a good workplace wise
Bad News: This is going to involve a lot of office politics and cajoling people into doing things they'd rather not deal with (see workforce planning) and people will likely see you as the bad cop initially.
The biggest thing I would add to schuss's points is that you cannot trust a resume when it comes to skills, just like you can't trust an interview (or series of interviews) when it comes to culture fit. If you can, I'd strongly recommend directly testing any technical knowledge or skill requirements for any given position. This doesn't have to be a super-special Silicon Valley "are you a mastermind genius? then solve this riddle!" bullshit test. You just want something that will validate that yes, this person has the competencies you would expect going in, and not just because they have X degree from Y place or Z years in the industry. Things like portfolios and examples of past work are also helpful for the less technical work that can't always be displayed on the spot. And to the parts about culture fit - don't hesitate to bring in their potential day-to-day colleagues as part of the final steps. They can do interviews, chat socially, try to see how they would get along, etc. But give them some ownership of who you are bringing in so that you have a better understanding of what they are looking for, and also so that they feel like they are part of that person's success in terms of on-boarding, training, etc. etc. etc.
Lastly, I'd say that you should be prepared to not have a 100% success rate going in. It will be unrealistic to always find the perfect candidate, and sometimes life gets in the way besides. People who seem like really good fits end up not panning out, and you may struggle to fill particular positions entirely. Setting and managing expectations with yourself and stakeholders will go a long way towards helping to streamline this process, as it will likely be a long-term, ongoing thing.
My hires have generally had 1 screen before I see them, then 1 detailed with me, then filter out ones I don't have a good feeling on (note that I'm managing these people, so my opinion counts more than in your case), then 1 detailed with a peer manager, then filter out, then a discussion/job shadow with one of my team and a quick interview with MY boss to get exposure to as much as possible. At that point we all talk and give general ratings of 1-4 on a number of general categories. While the end winning score isn't always the hire, it's usually in line.
Based on discussion I'll occasionally throw out some of the feedback if clear bias is present.
Also try to understand unconscious bias very clearly to prevent issues, as well as understand the crap out of protected classes and similar so you can give a clear list of no-no topics to the other people in management (IE - age, race, religion, political affiliation, sexual orientation etc.)
1) Too many rounds of interviews are loathed by everyone, but especially by entry-level hires. Entry level should be one and done, others for higher positions can probably afford more, but multi-round interviews are like a kick in the teeth to people who don't have income.
2) Acknowledge everyone who gets acknowledgement from you at some point. Phone interviewees, in-person interviewees. Too many times have i simply been ignored after an interview, which is the height of rudeness and conveys a sense of contempt, even if it is likely an honest oversight.
Entry level hires that don't work out end up being a waste of roughly 6 months of productivity, so getting it right is pretty important. Once someone is in the door, it can be very hard to remove them (which is a good thing in most cases), so making careful decisions is important.
It also really depends on what you mean by "Entry Level". If you're paying minimum wage your candidate pool may not support a more rigorous application process. If by "Entry Level" you mean the first job in your field out of school then I'd be really leery of anybody who couldn't be "bothered" to do multiple interviews.
Good point. My reference was to the latter - Entry level professional.
Actually, it's a modified Rorschach test. Clearly, the hiring manager is your mother and you want to sleep with her.
1) Resumes: If a candidate's resume is vague or doesn't speak specifically to skills that are a high priority for the position, they don't make it past the resume review. Additionally if their grammar or communication is poor, I don't want to waste my time talking to them. To me, resumes are a good gauge of the type of communication and work product I expect to get. While a candidate's strengths may not necessarily be in resume writing, they should have spent a good amount of time and thought on how they want to present themselves to a prospective employer and their resume should reflect that.
2) Phone Interview: I like to start with a 30 minute phone interview. This is a good way to quickly screen candidates without wasting too much of my or the candidates' time. During this interview, I like to ask this question: Briefly describe how your experience makes you a good fit for the position. I would have already provided additional detail to the position to them. If they take more than 8 minutes to answer the question, or don't let me get to the question, they are done and I don't need to talk to them anymore. This is in part a cultural test and an "are you going to drive me crazy" test. Other questions I ask during the phone interview will assess the basic skills I'm looking for and allow me to get a sense of whether the candidate knows what they are talking about.
3) In Person Interview: For this, I like to have others participate or have a series of interviews on a single day, depending on the position and people's availability. During this, I like to get a deeper sense of fit and see how the candidate interacts with different people. Typically, questions will consist of a deeper dive into their background and experience and why they are interested in the job.
I find that it helps to have a list of interview questions prepared to pull from based on how the conversation goes, with notes on my thoughts of the candidate to be written up right after. I also allow time for the candidate to ask questions during each interview since it will also give me an idea of a) how much thought they've put into the position and idea of working for my company and b) what's important to them.
If my job search was any indication, "entry level" typically means 3-5 yrs experience but willing to work for the pay level of someone fresh out of school. Which sort of sucks when you are actually looking for that first job in your field out of school.
Which leads to my advice for th OP. When doing your recruiting, if you are posting for the jobs, make sure you are listing them as what they actually are. When I was searching for jobs on LinkedIn, one of the first things I did was filter so that I was only looking at the entry level jobs, because thats the level I was. If you post it as an entry level and it isn't, your going to end up with a ton of applicants that aren't going to meet your required qualifications, and conversely, if it is entry level and you list it as something else, you will end up getting either no applicants, or Es that expect way more money than you are willing to offer.