“Because nothing says ‘we’re disorganized’ like a 6-week hiring process with no feedback.”
Hiring isn’t a scavenger hunt. It should be efficient, clear, and dare I say… enjoyable? Yet, too often, we treat recruiting like a test of endurance—for candidates and hiring managers. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Interview Like a Grown-Up
Candidates aren’t just performing—they’re interviewing you too. A sloppy process screams “we don’t have our act together,” and guess what? The good ones will bounce.
Train your interviewers. Give them rubrics. Encourage note-taking like it’s an Olympic sport. Structure creates fairness, and fairness creates confidence—for both sides.
- Train your interviewers (yes, even the senior ones)
- Use structured questions tied to actual competencies
- Actually take notes, don’t just vibe-check
Small business with no HR? No problem. Create a simple scorecard in Google Sheets for each interview. Give every stakeholder the same 5–7 criteria. Voilà—structure.
HR Pro Tip: “We’ll get back to you soon” is not a timeline. Put a deadline on it. Then stick to it like it’s payroll.
Ditch the Bias, Keep the Brains
Look at your panels. Look at your pipeline. Look at your process.
Red Flag Radar
- All-male panels, especially for roles where representation matters
- No rubric for scoring = gut feelings = biased hiring
- “Culture fit” used as a euphemism for “people just like us”
Green Flag Forecast
- Interviewer training that includes bias awareness
- Consistent feedback and scoring across candidates
- Candidate feedback loops and regular experience audits
Set Expectations Early
If you can’t tell a candidate what to expect next, how can they trust you with their career? Share your hiring timeline. Be honest about process changes. And for the love of HR, don’t go silent.
Give them:
- A clear hiring timeline
- Contact info for follow-ups
- A heads-up if delays are coming
Wrap-Up
A clean, fair, fast recruiting process is your first retention tool. Nail it. Otherwise, you’re setting up your new hire to wonder if that chaos they just witnessed is a preview of what’s to come. Spoiler: it usually is. Do better.
And one more thing for my small business crowd—document what’s working. That way, when the day comes that someone else needs to take over hiring (because they will), you’ve got a system, not a memory bank. Create redundancies now to avoid chaos later.