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In our experience, hiring at a small business looks less like a process and more like: Who's available? How much time do we have? What's the role right now? How fast do we need this done? By necessity, it’s whipped up from scratch. There's rarely repeatable or well-documented steps. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Here’s the inside scoop on our hiring playbook here at Permanent Equity: the 8-ish-step process we follow to hire for professional level roles (roles like accountant, graphic designer, director of marketing, any individual contributor at a professional level) among our portfolio companies.

A few things to bear in mind before we dive in. First, the process of improving processes is just that – a process. Our method continues to evolve, and it draws from a lot of different methods and ideas (for example, Who: The A Method for Hiring, Topgrading…). That leads to the second point. There are best practices and ways to think about streamlining your system to find and pinpoint better candidates. But every organization is unique, and the most effective hiring process for your company should reflect what your company needs and can support. So, take what you like and leave the rest. 

1. Get the job description right. That means understanding the role from all angles. So what are the competencies required? What does the role look like if it's successful? Why is it important to the company? Why are we even hiring for this role? How will it impact the revenue or key strategies for growth? If you’ve really thought through the role, when you are talking to a candidate, not only do you know exactly what you're looking for, but you also know what opportunities the role provides candidates.
   
   Then, make sure everyone involved in the hiring process knows these essential elements before you post it and before you start talking to candidates.
   
   The bottom line: Are we clear internally on the role we’re hiring for, how it helps the company, and what success looks like?
   

2. Automate the first screen. You've posted your job description. It's live on job boards. Applicants are coming in. If you have 400 inbound applications for a role, you need to create a resume screening process that is both streamlined and effective.
   
   The point is to be more efficient at bouncing people out of the funnel when they’re not the right fit. First, identify three to six key questions that are good indicators of whether a candidate might be a fit or not. Think specific skills that are essential for the job. Example: You’re a construction company hiring an accountant, and you need to be sure you’re talking to candidates that know construction accounting. Effective screening questions would sort for experience in percentage of completion accounting or WIP accounting. 
   
   Then set up an automation to send any applicant those questions. How do you do that? If you have applicant tracking software, it’s easy to set up a workflow within that system. But even if you don't, you can create an automatic workflow with a Google Form, a Zapier connection, and a Gmail account.
   
   If a candidate doesn’t have the experience or knowledge you think is essential for the role, they are immediately bounced from the process and sent a no thank you email.
   
   The bottom line: Does this person have the baseline experience and skills required for this position?
   

3. Finetune the screening interview. Conducting an effective screening interview at the midpoint of your hiring funnel is wildly underrated – done right, it saves you a ton of time later in the process. This is also the point in which you would inject candidates from your warm pipeline or passive candidates you’ve recruited through various channels.
   
   The set-up: A 30- to 60-minute (depending on the level of the job) video call.
   
   The tone you set matters. You’re trying to create the best opportunity for the candidate to share their strengths, skills, values, goals, and motivations and for you to outline what your company is looking for.
   
   Once you’ve had a conversation about the company’s needs and the candidate’s goals, you can have a conversation about whether there’s the potential for a good fit. And sometimes the answer is no. If you identify that the fit's not there in the first 15 minutes, you can stop the conversation. It saves everybody a lot of time.
   
   If there’s the potential for fit, you want to get a good overview of their experience. Start with a high-level career walkthrough. “Take me through your career up to now.” “Talk me through the transitions between each of your career steps.” “Tell me more about your most recent role.” And, finally, you want to ask one or two questions that get to your culture or maybe some of the soft skills involved in that job.
   
   This is also the point in the process where you mention reference checks. You want people to know that a reference check is part of the process – it encourages them to be fully honest about their experiences.
   
   The bottom line: Is this person the right fit for our company? If the answer is yes, they move through the next round.
   

4. Complete the competency interview. This is where you drill into hard skills for the role, and it should be conducted by somebody who has the core competencies – the direct supervisor for the role or someone who has done the job before. It will look different from job to job, but the key is to identify the hard and soft skills that will make someone successful in this role and then spend about an hour digging into those things. This is also a good time to let the interviewee ask questions that are specific to the role.
   
   The bottom line: Does the person who knows the role best think the candidate has the skills?
   

5. Hone in on a deliverable. This step is optional, but it can be incredibly powerful. If you’re hiring for a position with a clear product, ask for a sample of that product (it can be paid or unpaid, but make sure that if you don’t have the resources to pay, you’re not making the project too cumbersome). If you’re hiring for a position that doesn’t have an identifiable, accessible deliverable, you can instead ask them to complete your favorite personality assessment (DISC, Myers-Briggs, Kolbe, pick your poison).
   
   The point of this step is to get any additional information you can to help you feel like you understand this person and how they would fit with the role and the company. And, this step informs the questions and the things to poke at and dig into in the final round interview. (And, don’t screen people out based on a personality test, but use it to guide the rest of the process.)
   
   The bottom line: Can the candidate demonstrate the skills and personality fit the role and the company require?
   

6. Nail the in-person interview(s). Here, you’re looking at two to four hours, with multiple people involved in the process. Start with a meal or a communal event – a casual environment where all the stakeholders get to be involved in that initial introduction. Fundamentally, you’re trying to eliminate that repetitive first 15 minutes of every interaction.
   
   From there, there are a lot of different options from who’s in the room to how long each conversation is. The essential part of this in-person interview is digging into their experience, what they've taken from every job that they've had, and how they’ve transferred new knowledge and lessons learned between roles. It’s a chance for you to get face-to-face with someone, figure out if they have the right skillset and the right mindset, and determine in real time if they’re a good match for your culture.
   
   The bottom line: You can do a virtual hiring process, but there’s nothing like getting in a room with someone to understand how they react to serendipity and spontaneity – and how they interact with the people around them.
   

7. Don’t skip the reference checks. A lot of people are inclined to gloss over the reference checks. If you’ve done steps one through six, you’ve already spent time with this person and feel good about their personality, their resume and their background. It’s easy to feel antsy to move along with a hire. But reference checks can turn up critical information. Two tips for getting more out of them: (1) Ask the candidate to connect you to two of their previous supervisors. It increases the likelihood of getting connected with those people (once you’re connected, reiterate that their feedback and information is entirely confidential); (2) Ask questions that give you an opportunity to follow up and dig deeper (e.g., “Would you hire this person back?” or “Development is important for us. In what areas would you suggest we focus our development efforts with this person?”).
   
   Bottom line: It can seem like overkill, but committing to reference checks can help confirm your impression of a candidate – or turn up critical red flags.
   

8. Be willing to admit you’re wrong. If you’ve gone through the process above, you’re likely to feel committed to your hire because you’ve spent a lot of time and effort vetting, negotiating, and training. You don’t want to have got it wrong.
   
   But, sometimes you get it wrong. And if that happens, you need to be okay with letting someone go quickly and cleanly.
   
   Bottom line: If you’ve made a hiring mistake, fire quickly and try again.

Hiring is always important, but individual hires can make or break a small business. Getting a hiring process in place isn’t an easy lift – and it requires a lot of buy-in from stakeholders around your organization. But developing a thoughtful and thorough system (leveraging people and technology) puts you in position to hire candidates that will thrive in your organization and help your company flourish in return.

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