How to scale hiring

Many startups try to fix a hiring backlog by adding more external or internal recruiters which is not always the answer, more recruiters = more activity and time spent on recruiting, not necessarily more quality hires.

The real bottleneck is usually hiring manager responsiveness, slow feedback loops and scheduling, not recruiter capacity. The teams that scale well with talent density in mind think in systems and quality. Here’s our two cents in how to approach that:

Understand what you need

This sounds obvious but we’ve all been in interview feedback rooms where we realise that we might not actually be looking for the right skillset. A vague job spec is the most expensive thing in hiring. It creates long shortlists, mismatched interviews and late-stage rejections costing everyone time, money and also burns through your potential candidate pool without you even realising it. This is especially costly in niche candidate pools.

Before a role opens, agree on three things.

1. What this person must deliver in their first six months
2. What they absolutely need to have done before
3. What you are willing to have them learn on the job

If the hiring manager and team cannot agree or answer those then the role is not yet ready to open.

Have hiring managers become owners of the outcome

It can happen all too often that hiring managers submit a request to recruitment in what they are looking for as opposed to shaping the role together. This results in the recruiter becoming a glorified service desk, a model that is not scalable.

The fix here is shared ownership, bring your recruiting function, be it inhouse or externals into the hiring conversations as early as possible. Managers understand the skills and delivery well, recruiters understand the market and what candidates look for, when utilised in combination this can result in a seamless search.

A good process here can look like:

1. Managers write the scorecard, recruiters feedback and iterate and agree on this together
2. Recruiter runs the first screen
3. Managers do the first technical screen
4. Insert one or two more rounds that are a must in verifying skillset and culture-add
5. Managers give feedback within 24 hours

Build one process and reuse it

You don’t need to reinvent the recruitment wheel for every new hire. Pick a standard loop for each role family, Engineering, GTM, Finance and Ops and stick with it, so everyone knows what happens at each stage.

The research backs this up, a 2022 meta-analysis by Sackett and colleagues found structured interviews with the same questions and the same scoring for every candidate, are the single best predictor of job performance. More steps don’t make much of a difference. Google found four interviews were enough to predict a hire with 86% confidence, and each interviewer after that added very little.

You can always add a coffee chat or a litmus test for exceptions, or instead of separate interviews put 2 interviewers in one room. Consistency is faster, and it’s fairer to candidates.

Cut the stages that do not change decisions

A quarterly (or monthly depending on volume and capacity) review of your process is well worth your time in ensuring you learn and adapt for the next round of hiring.

Look at your last ten hires, which interview stage changed the outcome? Which one just confirmed what you already knew?

If a stage has not changed a decision in months, remove it. Every extra round adds roughly a week and costs you candidates who have other offers.

Use your network before you use job boards

Referrals, past candidates and silver medallists are your cheapest and fastest pipeline.

Keep a simple list of strong people you did not hire and why, most modern ATS systems will have lists you can create. Revisit it every time a role opens as it is often faster than a fresh search.

The takeaway

Scaling hiring is not about headcount in talent, hiring is a team effort. Changing the system in how you hire, defining clearer roles, owned processes with fewer stages will work wonders as opposed to bringing in my hands on deck.

If you are scaling a technical team and want to talk through where your process is losing time then let us know, we’re here to help.

Written by

Megan Gill

Principal Consultant

megan@missing-link.ioLinkedIn