A Tale of Two Cities: Lessons for High-Volume Hiring

Imagine two cities...

The first is a city that simply “happened.” Over time, houses popped up in different neighborhoods, stores found their places where land was available, and parks were squeezed into whatever space remained. There’s a downtown, and scattered suburbs—what some might call “bedroom communities”—surrounding the core. The layout is organic but chaotic, making commuting a daily puzzle for residents. The city functions, but its growth feels haphazard, as if it was pieced together without a guiding vision.

Hiring is the one thing that sets the stage for everything else that's good or bad in an organization. Great hiring leads to productivity, engagement, innovation, and retention. Poor hiring does the opposite. The transformative power of hiring goes beyond merely filling positions. The quality of hires shapes the viability and future performance of your business.

It’s time we elevate the importance of hiring by giving it the focus it deserves, a concept we explore in-depth in our new guide to building your ideal hiring process. Improving our hiring is more urgent than ever in today's complex, competitive job market.

Building the ideal hiring process is no longer a luxury; it's a strategic imperative. A well-designed hiring process is not one-size-fits-all. It needs to be custom-built to meet your organization's immediate needs while maintaining the flexibility to evolve with changing business goals and market conditions.

But here’s the challenge: how do we balance all the moving pieces to create a process that delivers both speed and quality, leverages technology without losing the human touch, and adapts over time? This article will explore the four essential pillars of a great hiring process. For a deep dive on this topic, you can also check out our Ultimate Guide to Building Your Ideal Hiring Process.

Hiring great people is one of the most important and most challenging things we do in our professional lives. The hardest part is often just knowing what to ask applicants to make sure we're getting the right person for the job. We know there are certain attributes the ideal employee will have, but what exactly are they and how do we test for those traits in applicants? And do it in the limited time you have? This pressure often leaves one feeling overwhelmed and even a little frustrated. 

Extroversion is one of the most widely talked about personality characteristics of all time. There have been books written about extroversion and introversion, TED Talks have been given, and there are dozens of online tests and opinions about this every present personality characteristic. It might be the most widely talked about personality characteristic because it makes a lot of sense and people can easily self-identify their own level of extroversion.

The technology giant, Google, is known for hiring the best talent in the market and equally known for their wacky interview questions. For years, Google interviewers used these seemingly random questions to "help" them hire great talent. Turns out though, these questions didn't help at all. 

“We found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time,” Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google, told the New York Times. “They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.”

Every company has and uses a predictive hiring system—whether they know it or not. Let's elaborate on a concrete definition of what a predictive hiring system is...

Having the wrong person in the wrong job is bad news for anyone. Poor job fit leads to employee dissatisfaction and under performance, while companies foot the bill to hire and train these employees who don't contribute or even detract from company success.