I had someone tell me recently the when they hired someone, they hired the first person that barely got over the bar. The one that met their requirements first, and not necessarily the "best" candidate.
At first I was surprised to here this, after all, don't we all want to hire the best person for the job? Don't we all want to be the "best" person? However the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was what I did as well.
When we're looking to hire someone, we run an ad, get a recruiter involved, or choose some other method to find people. We get responses, perhaps allowing some period of time for them to come in, but most companies I know didn't wait long. It was more a question of how many resumes we got, and when the guy in charge of sorting them could get through them. We'd call a percentage of the ones that survived the initial screening, and call a percentage of those in for an interview.
Depending on how pressed we were for hiring, and how many people had applied (and your workload), you might hire the first good candidate you saw. Or the best candidate of the limited number you saw. That's often how we hire people, just grabbing those that get over the bar. We don't have time to search out the most important ones. And we don't have time to let the ones that are good enough get away because we're searching for something better.
Sounds kind of like dating :)
There are definitely places that can set time limits on when they'll review resumes, and maybe they get the "best" candidate possible, but I think most companies that look to hire just grab the first person that meets their needs, possibly missing out on a better candidate because of time pressures. I know I've not even interviewed people I thought might be better candidates because of scheduling conflicts and having a good enough candidate already.
There probably isn't a better way to do things. After all, life is short and we can't spend an inordinate amount of resources just on hiring. There's real work to be done. But I do have a better way to run your company for the long term.
Keep a req open. One that you won't fill unless you find a great employee. A few extra employees won't necessarily hurt you, especially if you're a 100+ person company. But those really amazing employees are few and far between. If one becomes available, you should be able to snap them up right away without worrying about some quota from HR or upper management. So ask your boss to keep a req open, even if you don't have an immediate need.
My guess is there is always more work to be done if you find the right person.
Steve Jones
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