Have you hired someone in 1 day?

There three basic criteria in making the hiring decision, a variation of Strengths, Motivation, & Fit.

- Can they do the job?

- Will they do the job?

- Can you live with them?

On this subject, George Bradt is particularly good> http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2011/04/27/top-execu...

TLDR> Hiring is critical. Most teams waste too much time in the interviewing/decision process. Video Interviewing has made it take longer IMO not made it faster, because companies/teams feel it has no real cost to it.

Most teams and people spend way too long on the hiring process. Yes you should care about hiring as it is critical, and yes, you should be cautious because hiring bad is worse then not hiring at all, most times. However, that doesn't mean you go into analysis paralysis waiting for just that one special person to show up.

There is an art to hiring as much as there is a science behind it. This is one of those times that hours doing the job matter, but that doesn't mean you need 10 years of experience hiring, it means you need to time talking to and evaluating people. It may sound obvious, but hiring is all about your ability to evaluate a person, their intentions, what they are saying as well as what they are not saying. And yes, you get fooled and learn from it.

This whole taking 3-4-5 weeks or 5-6 rounds of interviews is insane and honestly a drain on valuable resources that doesn't pay you back. It does not need to be this way to have an efficient and selective hiring process. IMO people let fear and uncertainty cause 80% of the reason it takes so long now.

I have built numerous teams, and I always started with recruiting a selective and tight core of people first, 2-6 people usually. Then they will help find other like people to round out the team. I have never spent more then about 3 months to recruit that core team in total, and many times I have done it in far less time. Part of that comes from knowing a lot of people, but a better part of it is evaluating someones capacity to learn and do good work. This means not getting hung up on whether they know how to write the most efficient X, or they know a certain framework or whatever brain teaser someone thinks is relevant.

I also think the fact that companies do more video interviews today versus flying candidates to them first has actually caused a longer delay instead of making the process faster. This is because companies can talk to a lot more people, so they will have 2-3 good candidates, but be holding out for someone better because they feel it costs them nothing but a little time. In reality it is costing them a ton of lost productivity for the hiring staff and for the work that could be getting done.

When you are not Google/Facebook et al you have to recruit and jump on good people faster then your competitors do. So teams that move fast in the process win the better candidates many times even if their hiring offer is less than what the candidate might get by waiting through 3-4-5 rounds of interviews with another company.