How to get predictability & reliability into your hiring process

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My grandpa grew up without electricity.

He’s the last of a dying breed.

Born and raised in rural Wyoming, he grew up raising sugar beets without tractors or modern farming equipment.

Raised without the “easy button” of modernity, Grandpa knows a little bit about everything.

I was blessed to spend most of my childhood years growing up next door to Grandpa and to learn from his wisdom.

Funny enough, he taught me something while building a chicken coop in our backyard that can help you build a hiring process that has both reliability and predictability.

The Context

“Measure twice, cut once”

As Grandpa and I spent yet another Saturday on our chicken coop project, he put me in charge of cutting the side planks.

Over and over, he repeated the carpenter’s motto to me: “measure twice, cut once.”

Cutting a plank in the wrong spot meant not just having to redo the work, but also a significant loss of time (in the form of more trips to Home Depot) and lost money (due to having to replace the incorrectly cut planks).

After cutting too many planks to the incorrect length, Grandpa gave strict orders:

NO MORE “EYEBALLING IT.”

From that point on, no matter how sure I was that I had the right length, I had to pull the tape measure out and measure not once, but twice before every single cut.

To my young brain, this was about as agonizing a punishment as he could have issued to me.

But the results spoke for themselves.

Instead of taking MORE time to get the project done, measuring twice meant fewer unplanned trips to Home Depot and less overall work—meaning we got the job done much faster.

Too many agency owners do the opposite of “measure twice, cut once” in their hiring process.

They run a sloppy sourcing and interview process and hire the first person who looks good to them.

After a couple of weeks, the new hire starts displaying obvious red flags, and you have to fire them—wasting all that time you spent onboarding and training them.

True, you can always hire someone else for the role, but why would you want to?

Measure Twice, Cut Once In Your Hiring

Here are three simple steps you can add to your hiring process to ensure a good fit the first time:

 1. Always do at least two interviews.

One of these can be delegated, but you need at least two touchpoints with a candidate to make a decision. Planning on two interviews forces you to slow down and ask the hard questions before you make your decision.

 2. Follow the same process with each candidate.

If you require a video introduction from every candidate (like we do), don’t make exceptions for your “favorite candidates.” If they’re really as good as you think they are, they won’t hesitate to create a great video. If they’re not, however…

 3. Get an outside opinion.

I don’t care if this is your husband/wife/partner/friend, another recruiting agency, or a coach/consultant. Get someone who is not you to talk to your potential new hires. I can’t tell you how many times me or my co-founder have spoken to the same candidate and arrived at totally different conclusions about how good of a fit they are. After further evaluation, it usually comes to light that the candidate hid something from one of us that came up in the interview with the other person.

Always get a second opinion.

When to consider outside help…

If you have plenty of time and aren’t growing very much, you probably don’t need outside help.

After all, it can be a very valuable experience to figure out how to find candidates, how to vet them, and how to manage them on your own.

However, if you are growing quickly or hiring for roles where failure has a very high cost, it’s worth reaching out to someone who has recruited for companies like yours before.

If you’re interested in knowing more about what it would look like for us to recruit one or more of your open roles, click the link below to meet with one of my recruiting specialists.

It’s 100% free and no obligation.

Of course, if you’d like to discuss what it would look like for us to recruit A-players in Eastern Europe for you, we’re happy to discuss that as well.

→ Click here to schedule your free consulting call with a recruiting specialist

Until next time,

Nathan

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Nathan Fales
Co-Founder | Lean Leverage & Go Carpathian
Helping you hire the best & the brightest
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