Hiring never stops!
Your #1 role as a leader
One of the most important roles for any leader is hiring, especially as you build or lead a high growth business.
Hiring is not a project - it is a never ending quest and a critical priority always for building the best teams. If you are the CEO, founder, GM or head of any team, you personally must own and drive hiring. As much as you may have a talent acquisition team, or recruiters assisting, your #1 role as a leader is cultivating a pipeline of candidates to recruit from. Their quality and calibre is a reflection of your involvement, or lack of it.
Timing is not something you can control, so the hiring process never stops - regardless of the economy, your company's processes or market dynamics. In many cases the best candidate becomes available but there may be no role. You always need to be ready to hire, in both good times and bad.
For any leader starting a new role, or building a new business, or any team, getting the right people is key to success. The priority is getting the best people - as much as it is to make sure they fit the culture and add the value where you need them. Below I will cover the importance of getting the first hires right, and then the process of building the talent pipeline throughout your journey.
First hires!
Your first hire for your team or for your function or department sets the tone for all future hiring. It is so important. These are the people that will be your shining lights, uphold your standards, as well as the company's. So this means you need to get it right.
The most important value of the hiring journey is TRUST. Trust is always important but absolutely critical, as at this phase of the company you want your team to be completely committed, work with no or limited supervision, and to have a clear accountability and self awareness to know when to ask for help, or be able to own mistakes, and keep going.
You cannot underestimate the impact of hiring those first hires, where speed and momentum are critical to growth. When I started building teams from scratch, my first hires were usually those I had worked with before. Trust is already developed, and you know intimately those that have been grinding away with you; their strengths, weaknesses and where they fit.
That is the easy part. However if you are hiring outside your area of expertise or you have exhausted your immediate network for direct hires, there needs to be a wider talent pool to choose from, and this is where your knowledge of candidates becomes more limited.
Referrals
Referrals are from your extended network or from your own team members then become critical. Relying on referrals is far more insightful than relying on references from candidates.
Setting up financial incentives to encourage referrals has worked well for me in the past, especially when those initial hires are a great fit, these initial employees will work to get deeper into their networks and recommend more candidates that they have worked with, or know would be a great fit now they know what it is really like on the inside.
On a few occasions at different companies I also had the chance for star performers from our own HQ or other geographies. Not only does this retain and reward high performing employees and provide them with a new challenge, it allows you to transplant knowledge and know-how for immediate impact. In a few cases they never went back...
I will note that there will be many past colleagues who are keen to join you on your journey, but in many cases, there may be a mismatch between their career aspirations and skill sets and what you need. For example, if you are looking for a fast growing start up, hiring ex colleagues in a mature business won't work. Or your partner director from your last company will not make sense if you aren't building a partner driven business. The idea of working in a startup or scale up, rather than actually working in one are two different things. As the business keeps growing, there will be a time when the timing works for both parties - being honest and keeping in touch is critical.
When you have a deep industry experience and network, it may be wise to rank your network on what they can bring at different phases of your business journey. Who not to hire is as important as who you are hiring.
Making the wrong hire will waste valuable time, so the first hires are critical.
Building beyond your network
The next challenging stage part is really around building a sustainable pipeline of candidates beyond those first hires, which is an endeavour that never stops. Recruitment partners will help, and the level of trust garnered over many years of working together. As mentioned before trust only comes when there is an existing relationship, or through reputation and validation from someone else you trust. The importance of the ongoing hiring pipeline is critical whether that is a new role, or multiple roles into your leadership career.
What you are after though, is building multiple sources for your talent pipeline. Which means you need to own it. When I was hiring at Zoom, aside from what I have outlined above, LinkedIn was my best tool for reaching out.
In many cases, I would get unsolicited messages from those wanting to join and as much as it took a lot of time, meeting and understanding individuals gave me an immediate pool of talent to work with.
I also then reached out to many successful people directly. I studied the successful SaaS growth companies, who were a few steps ahead of the journey. Or in some cases where I knew that the tenure of prospects was around 4 years, which then indicated they would have their options period expiring.
If you are a challenger brand, that is very attractive for some, and very unattractive for others. The key here is to list the companies that you aspire to be like, or those that possess the values. This is where the absence of trust in knowing candidates can be overcome with being de-risked with narrowing your target list to those companies that are similar to your's.
Every day, without fail I would reach out to at least 5 prospects, and give them the story. In many cases, it was self selecting. Those that didn't reply and replied a week later lacked the urgency and were likely not ready for the early grind of a start up. That leaves those that did reply, which as expected was a mixed bag - but worst case was a candidate profile I could cultivate short term and long term.
I met each and every candidate, whether that was a direct report or not. The ultimate result was a high performing team, with very low attrition.
In many cases, those that were not ready for the early stages, I hired later in the journey where I needed specific skills set, or industry experience. Attitude trumped experience and even though there was a lack of experience, some of these candidates were the best hires. Hiring never stops.
Making mistakes
Whether it is a hot market, or you have a limited window to hire, speed is crucial. There will always be a balance between moving too fast and making the wrong decision, or taking too slow and missing out. That is part of the challenge.
One of my weaknesses is overanalysis and I overcome that by making the gut call so as not to lose time. There is no doubt, mistakes in hiring happen but this is the dance between indecisiveness and making calls quickly. It is then about making the calls to cut people quickly and making sure metrics are in place to make this happen seamlessly.
Sometimes things don’t work out on both sides, and that's life. Making the call to move on is the critical issue.
Consider including 3 month probation make this process easier - or otherwise make the KPI's or metrics very simple and very clear. Understandably, when things don't go right for a hire, having clear expectations set up front makes it easier down the road when a call needs to made.
Timing
Many speak about getting the right people on the bus. What if the timing is off?
You have no role or opening, and a fantastic candidate becomes available. This is the time to choose your battles and there are so many dependencies eg company process etc.
However I would always have a floating headcount or budget ready and available for times like these. In some cases, a backfill wouldn't be made for this purpose, or there was pre-agreements with HQ that will allow flexibility to take advantage of situations like this
What happens after the first phase of growth?
One of the learnings being at high growth companies, is that things change and usually at a fast pace. So some of the early hires also outgrow their roles.
One of my biggest challenges was how to satisfy the ambition versus the opportunity available. The fact is unfortunately you cannot satisfy everyone, and the balance to retain your best employees, attract new ones as you grow is a challenge. Also those that were the best at their roles in the early stages, may not fit the future. Many will progress their careers, some will leave and some need to leave for their own growth.
The role of hiring as a way of leadership is essential, and without it, your hiring risk increases and so will results. Building and nurturing a business network is one thing, though using it to your advantage for your hiring pipeline success is essential, as well as the experience you pick up along the way.