Hiring (the nightmare that it is)
I’ll be honest, in times gone by, we’ve made some mistakes with the hiring process.
Numerous no-no’s!
For one, we haven’t been very good checking references – we’ve too often put faith in how the person has presented and their confidence in their skills.
We’re guilty of leading during interviews – indicating our ideas instead of testing candidate’s thinking.
We even gave a second interview to someone who showed up with a hangover! (Unsurprisingly, that didn’t really work out).
A lot of the issues we’ve faced are commonplace in small companies.
Attracting the right candidates and being good at performance monitoring has always been a little difficult. We’ve often hired around the demand of needing the position, instead of waiting to grow our business based on finding the cream of the crop. Where we’ve rushed the appointment, it hasn’t worked out.
We’ve too-often invested heavily in roles on good-faith alone instead of patience and persistence in the hiring process.
All of that changed this year. We had a couple of big wake-up calls that prompted us to action. We’ve changed our attitude towards hiring; diligence and patience is the new motto.
Our fundamental attitude has shifted – we now accept having to deal with the situation while we wait to find the right person – even if this means we have increased pressure in certain areas.
We’ve honed our interviewing process – ensuring we’re more thorough so that everyone is better off; The team is happier with the placement, the candidate more comfortable in the organisation, and Flint Interactive can grow on the back of a happy team in which everyone is doing a great job.
As I said, where we made these mistakes, it didn’t work out – but the team that we have at the moment is amazing and I have extreme confidence in their skills and abilities to deliver awesome sites.
This is about the team we have and a brand that is built on a healthy balance of hard work and team culture.
