Streamlining the Hiring Process

Most People leaders don’t do a rigorous enough job of vetting out the Headcount Planning process. And you know what? I don’t blame them. More often than not, #HR leaders aren’t brought in until the eleventh hour — once all the decisions have been made and the only step left is to execute on the recruitment process. But here’s the thing: If you want to be an effective People leader, it’s your job to get in front of this and ensure your team is implementing a robust Headcount Planning process beyond just recruitment and post-hire enablement. Things like: - Ensuring you’re not over hiring to compensate for ineffective performance and workplace inefficiencies - Verifying that each hire is a long term need, not a short-term need that will lead to layoffs - Pressure testing that every dollar spent on your greatest company expense — employees — is optimally spent - Exploring the long term potential of each hire and whether or not it makes more sense to go more junior or promote from within We recently rolled out a new headcount approval process at Ethena and — among other things — it requires all department heads to answer the following 3 questions for any role they’d like us to open: 1. How will this hire help us hit our 2025 revenue goals? 2. What breaks if we don’t hire this role? 3. What alternative solutions have you explored, and why is a full time, in-house hire the only remaining option? Oh, and also: It’s a public document that all department heads have access to. Including everyone’s responses. Here’s what I love about this process: 🥇Questions like, “How will this help us hit our revenue goals” keep everyone focused on the big picture business goal while questions like “What breaks if we don’t hire this role?” help surface underlying inefficiencies. Maybe the person responds with a series of things that the business is in fact okay with breaking and should never have been prioritized in the first place. 🕵️ Getting everyone’s answers all in one place helps identify overlapping scopes of responsibilities. 2 teams are struggling with data analytics? Could we combine these roles into 1? 🧠 Giving all leaders visibility into everyone’s responses helps everyone level up their game. Perhaps someone on G&A is struggling to tie their needs back to the business, but a quick peek at the RevOps leader’s responses offers clear insights for how to apply a more business-forward mindset. 💡 The responses are a veritable treasure trove of insights into other areas of the busines. How do marketing leaders think about pipeline generation per BDR? How do Product leaders determine how many engineers it takes to roll out new Product updates? Want access to our full Headcount Request Template + tips for getting more involved in your company’s Headcount Planning process? 👉 Download my free template here: https://lnkd.in/exhmNaqY What are your top tips for ensuring a robust headcount planning process?

📱 My phone’s been blowing up lately—colleagues on both sides of the hiring game are venting about the same thing. Job seekers can’t land roles, and hiring managers can’t find people who actually stay. About half of my network who were job-hunting have found something, but the other half are still stuck in the grind. Meanwhile, companies tell me that even when they do make a hire, retention is a nightmare—new employees are bouncing within six months. The disconnect is real: companies are hiring, candidates are applying, but something is clearly broken. Traditional hiring—bloated job descriptions, ATS black holes, and never-ending interview rounds—is failing everyone. So, what needs to change? 🔄 Here’s what I’ve seen work: ✅ Ditch the ATS Dependence – Get back to human recruiting instead of relying on keyword filters. ✍️ Fix Job Descriptions – Make them clear, real, and relevant—cut the jargon. 🤝 Prioritize Personal Connections – Hiring managers should actively engage instead of passively posting. 🎯 Focus on Skills, Not Just Titles – Look at what candidates can actually do, not just where they’ve been. ⏳ Speed Up the Process – The best talent won’t wait around for a four-week approval cycle. 💬 Improve the Candidate Experience – Give real feedback and make the process transparent. Here’s a real-world fix I put in place: At a previous company, the hiring pipeline was a mess—ATS filters blocked great candidates, and the process dragged on. I introduced a referral-first hiring approach, tapping employees’ networks before posting publicly. We also replaced multiple early-stage screenings with a 30-minute call with the hiring manager. 📉 Time-to-hire dropped 35% 🎯 Quality of hires improved—better fits, fewer regrets 📈 Retention rates increased—candidates knew exactly what they were signing up for 🔑 Bottom line: Hiring is broken, but it doesn’t have to be. The best hires come through real connections, not algorithms. What’s been your biggest hiring (or job search) frustration lately? Drop a comment 👇 #Hiring #Recruiting #JobSearch #TalentStrategy #HR #FutureOfWork

AI in HR is on everybody's mind, yet only 4% of companies have a full strategy. Beyond experiments, how can organizations create real impact with AI? Our latest report, Maximizing the Impact of AI in the Age of the Superworker, by The Josh Bersin Company in collaboration with SAP SuccessFactors, explores how to create efficiency, improve the employee experience, generate better outcomes, and drive overall performance using AI. Organizations that go beyond automation and leverage AI strategically unlock higher performance, engagement, and business impact. 💡 Four Stages of the Superworker Journey Organizations adopting AI follow a progression that unlocks increasing value, with increasingly higher value and impact. The most successful companies focus on specific business problems and go beyond mere efficiency savings to create significant business value. 🔍 The Four Impact Areas of AI As organizations mature on the Superworker journey, the value of AI increases alongside four main areas. 1️⃣ Efficiency: AI dramatically speeds up processes, reducing time spent on tasks by 90% or more. Example: Döhler streamlined HR transactions using SAP's AI assistant Joule, making routine tasks easier, faster, and more intuitive. 2️⃣ Experience: AI improves enhancing job satisfaction and engagement. Example: Darussalam Assets improved the candidate experience and cut recruiting time from months to weeks using AI. 3️⃣ Effectiveness: AI enhances business decision-making and creates the improved outcomes. Example: Mahindra & Mahindra integrated AI into interviews, ensuring better quality of hire. 4️⃣ Employee Productivity: AI helps employees work at their full potential, unlocking new opportunities for performance. Example: Delta Air Lines used AI-based talent intelligence to increase internal mobility, helping frontline workers move into management roles. 🎯 Business Impact & Competitive Advantage Organizations embracing AI as a strategic enabler are seeing significant business improvements alongside each of the impact areas. Using benchmarks of proven outcomes helps companies prioritize solutions and anticipate business benefits. 📌 Next Steps To fully capture AI’s potential, organizations must: 🔹 Align AI strategy with business goals for maximum impact. 🔹 Redesign roles and work processes to integrate AI-driven insights. 🔹 Upskill employees to work alongside AI and drive continuous innovation. 🔹 Foster a culture of learning and agility AI is not replacing workers, it's helping transform every employee into a superworker—an employee empowered by AI to think strategically, make better decisions, and drive innovation. Are you ready to embrace AI? Read the report, available in Galileo, and let us know what you think. https://lnkd.in/gXcTdsJr #AIinHR #FutureOfWork #TalentManagement #Superworker #Leadership Josh Bersin The Josh Bersin Company Liliana Zolt Dan Beck Stella Ioannidou Maryann Abbajay Lara Albert Tim Gregory

I had a candidate interview at 10:00 this morning and by 10:38 the hiring manager messaged me on Slack to extend an offer. They applied. They had two conversations. Recruiter screen. Hiring manager interview. No hoops. No take home. No project. They applied, interviewed, and got an offer. I believe in a smooth candidate experience. If you believe someone is a good fit, hire them. There is no need to stall the process, keep asking for more candidates, and put great talent on hold. Dragging out the process does not make the decision stronger. It risks losing the very talent you need. A strong process is clear, respectful, and efficient. Candidates should feel valued, not tested endlessly.

The HR tech currently out there at the moment isn't automating recruiting - it's automating talent acquisition/hiring. As I called out in my post yesterday, I don't think processing/screening applicants is 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔. Let's take a look at a major talent acquisition automation solution that enables you to "automate the boring stuff - everywhere you hire." It can automate: - job search and apply - applicant screening - interview scheduling - candidate prep - video interviewing - creating offers - onboarding - hiring events - referrals - collecting feedback I don't think any of the above is 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 ("persuading someone to work for a company or become a new member of an organization").  And yet, some companies implementing this technology have been able to let go of hundreds of recruiters. 🤔 Let's take a look at voice agents. There are more than a few solutions out there now that can call applicants and screen them for positions, gather information, enter it into an ATS, and recommend job matches. Is this 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 automation? No. I'm still making my way through the comments to my post earlier this week on what I think is the broad misuse of "recruiting," but if you take a broader definition of "recruiting" to mean any/all hiring activity, what then is the specific act of "persuading someone to work for a company or become a new member of an organization?" Words matter. There are companies that have been able to implement TA/hiring technology to automate the hiring process (albeit for low complexity, high volume hiring) and reduce time to hire, improve quality of hire, and increase candidate satisfaction. In this case, you could argue that the people weren't adding any value to the process. If you were to be completely objective - you could even argue that people were actually a hindrance. I know - that was tough for me to write. But if you remove people from a process and results improve, what else is that really saying? If that sounds scary, what's even scarier is that TA tech is totally capable of actual 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 - "persuading someone to work for a company or become a new member of an organization" - something many would assume is solely a human capability. Generative AI, especially when prompted properly, can communicate and persuade at an expert 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑟 level. I know this because this is something I've been experimenting with quite a bit - it's actually quite amazing. So while HR tech currently automates the processes within talent acquisition, it's only a matter of time before these providers start infusing actual 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 automation into their products and services. The question I am left with is, how will people respond? #AI #futureofrecruiting

Treat your recruiting team the way you'd want them to treat your candidates. Your recruiters can only deliver what you enable them to deliver. No clarity from hiring managers means no clarity for candidates. Here's what this principle actually means: 1. Give them real ammunition, not job descriptions Recruiters can't sell what they don't understand. Yet most hiring managers hand them a JD and say "go find someone." Then wonder why candidates aren't excited. Do a real kickoff. Create an intake doc. Brief your recruiters like you'd brief your sales team. Why does this role matter? What will this person actually build? Show them the real impact. When recruiters understand the mission & the role, candidates feel it. 2. Stop making them chase you for answers Imagine if you applied somewhere and waited a week for every response. That's what recruiters face internally. They message candidates "we'll get back to you soon" while waiting days for your feedback. They look incompetent because you're not responding. Every delayed decision is a recruiter losing credibility with a candidate who has three other offers. 3. Your urgency becomes their urgency When a CEO personally joins a recruiting standup or sends a quick note about why a role matters, everything changes. Recruiters move faster. They push harder. They believe more. Send emails on their behalf. Jump into nurture sequences. When hiring is treated as "HR's problem," recruiters feel it. And so do candidates. The energy you bring to hiring is the energy candidates feel in the process. 4. Let them shape the process, not just execute it Recruiters see hundreds of interviews. They start to see which questions actually predict success. They spot patterns you miss. Too many companies treat them like admins. Include them in designing interview loops. Let them flag when your process is losing good people. They're your early warning system if you actually listen. 5. They're selling your company 100 times while you're building it Every recruiter conversation is a brand moment. Every rejection handled poorly is a Glassdoor review. Every candidate who feels respected tells ten friends. Even your rejections matter. Give real feedback. Close the loop. Your recruiters are having more conversations about your company than anyone except customers. Treat them like the frontline brand ambassadors they actually are. When recruiters feel like partners, candidates feel it too. When they feel like order-takers, your hiring shows it. The best companies don't have recruiting teams. They have talent partners.

One of the most counter intuitive things you might be experiencing in this job market: seeing companies take LONGER to hire someone despite having huge numbers of applicants. There's actually a lot of psychology behind this: we fall into decision fatigue and analysis paralysis. 1. One study showed that when shoppers had the choice of a display with 6 options vs one with 24 options, 60% of those shoppers preferred 24 options - but only 3% made a purchase. Meanwhile, of the 40% who chose the display with fewer options, 30% made a purchase. 2. There's a great book called "The Paradox of Choice" which explores how much harder it is to make decisions when we have lots of options, and how much more likely we are to experience buyer's remorse and wonder what "what if". 3. There's also research on those who make choices in an attempt to "maximize" vs "satisfy" a need. Those who want to maximize and make the very best choice also often find themselves becoming overwhelmed with the decision-making process, dissatisfied with any of the options, and ultimately less likely to make a decision and be happy with that decision. Meanwhile, those who orient towards making a "good enough" choice are often less stressed and happier with their decisions. 4. And finally, there's lots of research that shows that we experience "decision fatigue" where being asked to make lots of decisions actually erodes the quality of that decision-making. So we end up in a situation where employers are overwhelmed with lots of awesome candidates and find themselves wanting to ask just a few more questions or meet with one more person to find the right person. What can we do in TA to help mitigate this? 1. Clear guidelines for what we're looking for and orienting towards hiring a person who meets those expectations vs continually trying to find someone a bit "better". 2. Manage quantity. We can close apps with a high volume of applicants once we find a decent number of people who meet the requirements for the role, and we can manage how many people we put in front of hiring teams to mitigate decision-fatigue vs asking them to comb through countless profiles. 3. Have structured and consistent processes for what information we'll get and when decisions will be made. 4. Recognize when we're falling into these pitfalls, and intervene so we don't spin our wheels unnecessarily. Ultimately, this dynamic can cause us to waste organizational resources on unnecessary interviewing, negatively impact candidate experience, erode employer brand, and cost us great candidates.

A candidate of mine received a $210K offer recently. He asked for $225K. The company said no, $210K was the top of budget. The offer was accepted. Why? Before the company said no, the CEO called the candidate directly. The CEO explained the budget restriction. He explained that their offer of $210K did not reflect how they felt about the candidates experience. The CEO offered a performance review at 6 months instead of a year, which would come with a raise. The CEO explained that he wanted the candidate to join his organization. The candidate was thrilled. He verbally accepted the offer on the spot. People appreciate communication and feeling wanted. No one expects perfection. Communication can go a long way in the interview process. I don't believe the candidate would have accepted if HR had just sent an email. Agree? #hiring #hiringprocess #offeraccepted #interviewtips

A common mistake I see when delivering an offer to candidates... In recruiting, we give out offers everyday so it can feel very routine and exciting for us. For candidates, this can be a decision that shapes their entire life and can come with a ton of mixed emotions. Think about this for yourself... Have you ever been in an interview process where things picked up quickly and all of the sudden, you are at the offer stage. You were so focused on completing each stage and putting your best foot forward that you didn't really take the time to consider all of the ramifications of changing jobs or considering multiple pathways at once. Recruiters tend to think that the moment of offer is going to be pure joy from the candidate (I made this mistake early on in my career), only to be surprised when you realize there can be 10 things that come up for the candidate that now have to be managed and worked through. Here are a few things I’ve learned to do differently: 1. Prep the candidate. I don't make promises. But I do find a moment in the process to say, “If you were to move forward to an offer, what are the things you’d need to consider in your decision?” That question alone opens the door for reflection. 2. Don’t lead with numbers. When I deliver an offer, I never jump straight into comp. I first ask: “Are there any open questions about the opportunity or role?” If there’s any vagueness or hesitation, we pause. No point delivering an offer until we’re aligned. 3. Give space to process. After I walk through the offer, I do ask if they've made a decision (a step I think is necessary as a recruiter) but I don't push after that. I answer questions. I follow up. But I respect that the weight of the moment takes time to sit with. 4. Ask how they make big decisions. I’ll often ask, “Who’s in your corner when you make big calls like this? Where do you go to think clearly?” This helps the candidate begin their decision-making process—and it helps me better support them, too. 5. Check in early and often. Sometimes I’ll say, “Hey, taking my recruiting hat off for a second—how are you feeling?” That small gesture can go a long way in building trust. We give out offers every day. But for the person on the other side of the table, this might be the biggest professional decision they’ve ever made. We should treat it that way. #hiring #recruiting #techrecruiting #techhiring

300 resumes for one role and your best candidate just ghosted you after waiting three weeks for feedback. This scenario plays out daily in recruiting teams everywhere. AI Recruiting Agents offer a different path forward. Think beyond the hype for a moment. These agents handle the repetitive tasks that drain your team's energy: resume screening, candidate ranking, interview scheduling, skill test deployment. All automated. What fascinates me is how they learn. Every hiring decision becomes training data. They recognize patterns, spot which traits predict success in your organization, and identify potential beyond the resume. The integration piece matters too. They plug into tools you already use while your recruiters focus on what humans do best: building relationships, reading between the lines, and making nuanced judgment calls. The data tells the story: 35% faster time-to-hire and 20% higher candidate satisfaction for companies using AI in 2024. That's competitive advantage. Of course, bias remains a real concern. Unchecked AI can perpetuate hiring mistakes from the past. Building in transparency and audit trails isn't negotiable. How are you balancing speed with quality in your hiring process right now? My thoughts on this are below in the comments. #recruitment #recruiting #hiring #HR #HumanCapitalist