In an earlier blog I described some of Guy Kawasaki’s thoughts about - The Art of Recruiting.

 

In his book Reality Check, Guy presents thoughts he obtained from a colleague, Craig James of eMolecules.

 

Craig James is a former Hewlett-Packard employee. Craig describes how his unit of H-P achieved noteworthy success using a project-management approach to recruiting. They treated recruiting like a project. They used a project-team approach, with a team leader. They used the same interview process for each candidate. They worked to perform the recruiting under a short time frame…i.e., they worked to reduce the variables so each candidate was treated in a very similar way.

 

The H-P interview process steps can be summarized as:

• Host: greet candidate, give tour, explain interview process [20-30 minutes] 
• Technical interview #1: tough, detailed, technical grilling [60 minutes]  
• Project manager interview: the hiring manager, non-technical interview with focus on the job [45-60 minutes]  
• Lunch: with the project manager and one other project team member...informal 
• Human Resources interview: details about benefits and the company...reference checks [30 minutes]  
• Technical interview #2: like technical interview #1 but less intense...explore candidates prior work…dig into the candidate’s explanations of his/her successes and failures [60 minutes] 
• Host (reprise):...follow up questions and discussions of the next step...thank candidate [15-20 minutes]

Ultimately, the H-P team would reach a decision. Regularly the team members reached similar decisions so when the met as a team to discuss the candidates, consensus was, in general, easy to achieve.

 

As usual Kawasaki provides lots of good ideas, including many more helpful pieces of advice provided by Craig James.

 

More on the art of recruiting in future blogs…