Most companies will tell you that talent is their number one priority.

If thats true then its

surprising to me that so few put any kind of rigor around their hiring practices. The high cost of a
bad hire is well documented, so we must assume that to consistently hire great talent, it must be
cost prohibitive.
In my experience its quite the contrary. In fact, its actually the best use of time and resources.
From my perspective, what the critical act of making a great hire requires is unwavering
consistency and strong leadership.
Consistency is critical. In order to truly calibrate candidates, you absolutely must have a reliable
baseline. Strong leadership is also key. If making the process both simple and successful is a
priority, then you must mean it, and follow through.
Ive had the pleasure of working at such great companies as Google and LinkedIn, and in my
20+ years tenure in this field, Ive been on the hiring side of the interview seat many times over.
From that perspective, Ive come to know that the following is the basic formula for great hiring:
1. Write a clear job description: Do this first and make sure you can objectively score a
candidate against both the skills and experience.
2. Assemble an interviewing team: This group should comprise the fewest amount of people
required to get enough feedback, but no less than four. Pick one or two people from outside the
area into which the candidate will be hired to reduce selection bias.
3. Assign interview topics to each person on the team: This will help ensure a better outcome as
youll get more diverse information. As an important bonus, the candidate will have a better
experience since they wont get duplicate questions and your organization will appear more
organized.
4. Grade the candidate on 4 dimensions: A generally accepted way to gather the right type of
feedback is to score the candidate on:
Fit: How well will the candidate fit with your companys culture? At LinkedIn we have well-defined
cultural tenets and values so we can score candidates on their ability to drive meaningful transformation,
to collaborate, to take intelligent risks and to act like an owner to use a few examples.
Intelligence: How smart is the candidate? This may be where you choose to ask the candidate to solve a
problem or complete a case. To make this most applicable, make sure the problem is related to the work
the candidate will do. You may even choose a problem youre currently trying to solve, without divulging
too much information.
Skill: Is the candidate a subject matter expert and do they have enough domain expertise to be successful
in your organization?
Leadership: Can the candidate play a leadership role relative to the intended position? This doesn't
necessarily mean are they a good leader of people although it may. Its equally applicable to individual
contributors as all; A players need to be able to lead cross-functionally.
5. Use behavioral questions: These are questions that ask a candidate to describe a time when
they personally did something that addresses an issue you are interested in knowing more
about. For example: Tell me about a time when you had to challenge a superior. What
happened? This line of questioning is important because it helps standardize the type of
feedback youll get through the interview process. Its also important because it forces the
candidate to:
Be practical, not theoretical they need to talk about something they did as opposed to something they
might do.
Be the central character in a story which helps the interviewer understand how they relate to others (by
the way, when you ask behavioral questions make sure to ask for lots of detail and ask the candidate to
use I not we when they tell the story. Ive noticed this can make some candidates very uncomfortable
but it really requires them to describe themselves and their history as opposed to something that was a
team or company effort.)
Discuss their accomplishments
Tell a story from which you can quickly discern their communication strengths and weaknesses.
Prioritize what they want to tell you they can only pick one story.
6. Record the answers: This is the most painful part, and the area where you may get the least
compliance from your interviewers, but its critical. With at least four interviewers, four
dimensions, lots of questions and multiple candidates, youll get a lot of information. It will be
impossible to remember it all. I know some people think its distracting to be writing or typing
during an interview. If you feel this way, then either pause and write between questions, or
reserve time after each interview to write down your questions and answers. This information is
helpful on many levels partly because it will clearly identify where multiple interviewers saw
strengths and weaknesses.
7. Score the candidates answers: This is critical since this is how you will ultimately decide who
gets the role. Make sure each interviewer scores the candidate across the 4
dimensions:Fit, Intelligence, Skill and Leadership. I find a four-point scale using whole numbers
works best. Its simple and provides enough information to get to a conclusion. Its also an even
number, so interviewers cant pick a midpoint that tends to be less helpful.
8. Wash up: After each round of interviewers make sure the interview team sits down face-to-
face for at least 30 minutes to discuss the candidates. This may seem like something that can
be done over email but I find the face-time is the most useful exercise. This is when interviewers
will be most passionate about the good and bad. Speaking rather than writing allows the
interviewers to also go into detail when prompted.
9. Repeat: Im pretty confident that if you follow these steps youll get a vastly improved quality
of hire. If thats the case, then do it all the time.
The hardest part of putting this in place is likely to be getting leadership to comply. With over-
scheduled partners and insane travel schedules, face-time can be challenging, but its the one
thing we all have to overcome if were committed to hiring well. Doing so will set a fantastic
example for everyone else. If you need to convince your leadership, try using this in your
functional area and record the results then bring them to your leadership. No one is too busy
or too important to do this right.
Do you agree or disagree? Id like to hear how you hire and any other best practices you use