The recruiting process remains broken despite so much talent being available

TL;DR. When was the last time you as a leader examined the recruiting process? Is it working? What could be better?

"You don't need these employees"

I am an advisor to a growing technology company. Prior to the next Board meeting, I asked for:

- How many employees (mainly software engineers, product managers, and other technology roles) are approved to be hired during this fiscal year?

- How many open requisitions are open?

- How many days these requisition remain unfilled?

I suggested to both CTO and CEO that these requisitions are at risk of being closed.

During the Board meeting, one of the Board members asked for the same information. After the metrics were presented, the Board member said:

- "If you cannot fill these requisitions in one quarter, you don't need these employees. If you still need them, that's fine. Fix the recruiting process and then submit a new hiring plan. Then these new hires will be approved. For now, these requisitions are no longer in the budget."

How to fix a broken recruiting process

The answer is not getting a new application tracking system although this system can help.

Every leader must participate in the recruiting process.

For the company that I advise, the decision to eliminate open requisitions was a sobering moment.

What was broken

The recruiting process was outsourced. Not just the process itself but the entire intellectual value behind the recruiting process:

- These are the problems we are solving

- To solve these problems, we need to hire individuals with specific skills

- These skills are ...

- We are an amazing employer with an amazing culture (consider us first)

- The recruiting process is short; the hiring manager will speak to you immediately

- And yes: our benefits are very competitive and we welcome remote and hybrid work arrangements

Job descriptions failed to attract the right people because the people who edited job descriptions were not accountable for hiring the right people.

What changes were implemented

Every leader who had an open requisition was now accountable for:

- Creating the job description

- Working with recruiter to evaluate candidates

- Individuals with highest potential were immediately interviewed by the hiring manager (too busy was not an acceptable excuse)

- Interviews were conducted when the candidate was available, not when the hiring manager was available

- Hiring metrics became a part of how leaders were evaluated

Yes - 2 managers were asked to leave because they did not take hiring seriously.

Two new managers were hired to fundamentally believed in hiring the right people and invested a lot of time in hiring and retaining great people.

The next Board meeting

All open requisitions were closed.

The company successfully justified the return of previous requisitions that were unfilled and closed.

The Board member who closed the unfilled requisitions took the executive team out for dinner to discuss what changes were implemented.