Superstar hiring checklist: How to speed up your hiring cycle for a “must-hire”

Know the essential requirements for the job before you start interviewing people, so you’ll recognize a superstar candidate right away.

When we present an exceptional candidate for a job, it’s always a race to see if the client can react fast enough before the candidate moves on.

Sadly, we lose at least 85% of our very best candidates if we schedule their interviews over 7 days away.

With a few tweaks to speed up the hiring cycle whenever you identify a superstar candidate, you don’t have to risk losing the best ones.

We created the Superstar Hiring Checklist because we really really hate having to tell a client that the candidate they want to hire just accepted another job offer! I hope it will help you convince the decision makers to implement a more agile hire process for the candidates you really need to hire.

The real cost of slow hiring

When an employer schedules multiple interviews with multiple candidates, by the time they get around to actually meeting the candidates, some of the best candidates have moved on. They’re left with a list that’s a little less qualified and a lot more active in their job search.

• the quality of your team is slowly degraded
• higher cost per hire due to the cost of not having someone in the seat
• your brand takes a hit because people talk
• your internal staff suffers while they have to pick up the slack
• doing 6 or 7 internal interviews is very expensive

Here’s our Superstar Hiring Checklist

When you identify a superstar candidate that you really don’t want to lose, it’s time to go into speed hiring mode.

Before the interview stage

• Have a very clear idea of who you want to hire and why, so you immediately know when you have someone that checks all of your boxes.
• Superstars don’t always have 10 out of 10 metrics. Understand the key deliverables for a job.
• Know the essential skills you are looking for.
• Know the “nice-to-have” skills and experience that move a candidate into the Superstar category.
• As soon as you identify a “must-hire”, pull out all the stops to expedite your hiring process before they accept another offer!

Interviews

When you identify a “must-hire” candidate, it’s best to extend the job offer right away.

• Get superstars to interview superstars. This is a killer technique because smart people want to to work with other smart people
• Be flexible if the candidate is currently working. Consider doing a Skype of Google Plus interview
• Maximum two interviews per candidate
• Emphasize career development and exciting projects they will work on
• Limit the length of the interview to less than 90 minutes. The candidate’s time is valuable. They may be taking time off work to meet you.

Technical Testing

• Zero technical testing, or at least make technical tests under 15 minutes.
• Technical test questions should not come from a textbook or cover obscure concepts.

Job Offers

• Give the Hiring Manager the authority to make this decision! (very very important)
• Make verbal offers to superstars the same day
• When you extend a verbal offer, give the candidate 24 hours to accept (or 48 hours if necessary). This limits the amount of time they have to negotiate offers with other companies.

Feel free to print out the Superstar Hiring Checklist pdf!

If you do the stuff I recommend in the checklist, you’re going to hire more superstar candidates, faster. And you’ll lower cost-per-hire because you won’t be extending the recruitment process unnecessarily while the best candidates disappear.

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