If it ain’t broke you should still fix it

Not everyone has visibility into every issue

Today’s edition of Hills I’ll Die On™️: hiring issues persist because people at the top don’t realize they’re issues to begin with.

And let me say this twice so it’s clear. It’s not “leadership doesn’t care” it’s “leadership doesn’t know.” (Most of the time.)

Leaders are primarily concerned with 3 things: Making the product. Selling the product. And having the people needed to do it. If those things are happening, what’s the issue?

From a hiring perspective, butts in seats is far and away the primary goal. Everything else is style points. And more importantly, someone else’s job to worry about. (HR, hiring managers, recruiters, etc.)

But with hiring, those style points do matter. Every bad review or word out mouth means tripling the effort to generate the same top of funnel interest. Every extra step added at the last minute casts doubt in the candidate’s mind and gives your hiring competitors the upper hand. And every declined offer means more time and money spent doing the job all over again. Yay double work.

That last part is important. Hiring costs time and money. Even if the job is getting done, how did you lose in the inefficiencies? How much more value could your team provide if they weren’t doing the job twice?

These are normal, human organizational problems. If you’re not in the weeds (and no CEO can be) you simply don’t have visibility into this. Out of sight, out of mind isn’t something that can be fixed. At least not across the entire business landscape.

But on an individual company level:

👉Leader can and should take an interest in drilling down a level or two. Go beyond butts-in-seats and look at efficiency and interviewee experience.

👉Internal recruiting leaders should uncover and convey the importance of inefficiencies up the chain when they see them.

👉If you need to use an external firm, don’t just pick one who can find people. Choose one with the knowledge base to better improve your internal systems.

James Hornick

Partner at Hirewell. #3 Ranked Sarcastic Commenter on LinkedIn.