The first chapter of my book, Building a Winning Business: 70 Takeaways for Creating a Strong Company during Good and Bad Economic Times, is titled Hire Slowly.  A recent Harvard Business Review post was focused on hiring.  It stated:

1.  Always be in hiring mode

2.  It takes more than the HR department to find and develop talent

3.  Hire quickly

On item #1, I agree 1,000%.  Often, I’m asked when interviewing a candidate, “Why is Intertech hiring for [fill in the name of the position]?” My answer is “We’re always hiring.” It’s true.  We are.  Top talent will always have a home at Intertech. 

On the second item, for years, we’ve had a “virtual bench.” This concept is defined in the book Topgrading.  With a virtual bench, you’re staying in touch with prospective employees who are happy with their current firm and aren’t looking for a job.  Things change...  their great manager gets replaced by a horrible boss; their firm gets sold and relocated, etc.  Regardless of the reason, we want to be at the top of the list when a top performer is doing a job search.

On the last item, surprisingly, I disagree with the Harvard Business Review post because of the Harvard course I took on leading professional service firms.  Jay Lorsch, the chair, stated the opposite… “Top firms spend an inordinate amount of time in the recruiting process.” There were multiple examples of top firms that did dozens (yes, dozens!) of interviews for a single candidate. 

Regardless of the approach, any good hiring process has the same goal – get the best and have prospects self select out if they aren’t a fit.