I have a simple three step view of the hiring process:

Step 1.  Companies have a job they wish to be performed, requiring certain skills and experience.  Define those skills

Step 2.  Acquire candidates and interview candidates to determine if a candidate has these three things:

1. The skills necessary to perform the job?
2. Willingness to perform the job?
3. Willingness to perform the job at a price the company is willing to pay?

Step 3.  The first candidate that answers the three questions affirmatively gets hired.

This seems simple.  What makes it complicated?

My three step process assumes a couple of things.

1. It assumes the actual skills needed to perform the job are accurately determined. We have all seen examples of jobs requiring superfluous credentials and experiences that do not directly bear on the candidate’s ability to do the job or the skills to do the job.
2. It assumes that the hiring manager has the necessary expertise to determine if the candidate has necessary skills.
3. Hiring manager bias. Most of us have subconscious biases that prevent us focusing the decision on only the three items in Step 2.  Is the candidate like us? Do we feel comfortable with our decision?  With the person?  Hiring managers can, also, be concerned by others second guessing their hiring decision, so they try to hire a candidate with excess skills, just to be safe.

Additionally, in my opinion, there a several hiring traps that don’t make for a better candidate being hired, but wastes a lot of time.

1. The myth of the “A” player.  This does not mean the all candidates are the same Of course, some are better than others.  This just means that for most positions, the three questions answered affirmatively are sufficient.  The process will work for job with specific skill sets.  The skills required need to be defined more specifically (e.g. neurosurgeon).  Searching for an “A” player (whatever that means) takes a long time and may not be successful.  Meanwhile, the job remains vacate and no work is being accomplished.

2. “Passion” – what does this mean and why does this matter, if the three questions in Step 2 are answered affirmatively?

3. Where do you want to be in 5 years? Who cares? Given that the average tenure is a only a couple of years and if the company is a startup, the company may not be around that long. This is a waste of time (refer to Step 2)

4. Cultural fit – this is both nebulous (other than no A**holes, how do you define it) and can lead to everyone at the company being the same, leading to group think. Evidence is regularly surfacing that a diverse (not all the same) workforce gets better results.

5. The “best” candidate. This takes a long time, and the hire may not work anyway.  This presumes the hiring manager can determine the “best” candidate