The Definitive Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad

Harvard Business Review, May 09
This article offers our best thinking about the most effective way to hire top-level managers, based on a combination of our own and established research about the relationship between recruiting and long-term corporate performance. The following is, to our knowledge, the first time that an end-to-end set of best practices has been put forward in one place. Our compendium comprises seven steps, which cover the full recruitment spectrum: anticipating the need for new hires, specifying the job, developing a pool of candidates, assessing the candidates, closing the deal, integrating the newcomer, and reviewing the effectiveness of the hiring process.
Anticipate your future leadership needs, based on your strategic business plan. Intuit’s deep analysis of long-term staffing needs has contributed to famously smooth management transitions.
• Identify the specific competencies required in each position you need to fill. For example, ask, “Does this job require an entrepreneur, manager, or leader?”
• Develop a sufficiently large candidate pool. Considering both inside and outside candidates increases the likelihood you’ll find the right person for each job.
Steps to effective recruiting:
Anticipate Your Needs
Every two to three years review your high-level leadership requirements in light of your strategic business plan. Answer these questions:
• How many people will we need, in what positions, in the next few years?
• What will the organizational structure look like?
• What must our leadership pipeline contain today to ensure that we find and develop tomorrow’s leaders?
Specify the Job
For each leadership position you’ve identified, specify competencies needed in that role. For example:
• Job-based: What capabilities will the job require?
• Team-based: Will the applicant need to manage political dynamics?
• Firm-based: What resources (supporting talent, technology) will the organization need to provide the person who fills this role?
Develop the Pool
Cast your net widely for candidates by asking suppliers, customers, board members, professional service providers, and trusted insiders for suggestions. Consider “inside-outsiders” (internal candidates not bound by corporate tradition and ideology) and “outside-insiders” (former employees, customers, suppliers, advisers, or anyone who’s worked closely with a trusted insider).
Assess the Candidates
Have each candidate’s prospective boss, boss’s supervisor, and the top HR manager conduct “behavioral event interviews”: Ask candidates to describe experiences they’ve had that resemble situations they’ll face in your organization. Probe for exact actions candidates took and the reasoning they followed.
Evaluate a broad spectrum of references—former bosses, peers, and direct reports—asking about specific things candidates did and actual results achieved.
Close the Deal
Once you’ve settled on your final choice of candidate, boost the chances your job offer will be accepted:
• Share your passion about the company and the position, showing genuine interest in the candidate.
• Acknowledge the role’s opportunities and challenges, differentiating the opportunities at your firm from those of competitors.
• Strike a creative balance between salary, bonus, and other long-term incentives.
Integrate the Newcomer
Integrate new hires into your company’s culture:
• During their first few months, have bosses and the HR manager check in regularly with each new recruit.
• Assign each newcomer a mentor—an established star in your organization. Mentors should provide ongoing support, not just an initial “buddy” fix to help newcomers feel at home.
• During newcomers’ meetings with mentors, bosses, and HR, explore questions such as: Are we providing you with enough support? What other types of support would be useful? Can you describe the relationships you’ve developed throughout the organization? What other types of relationships would you find useful?
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