What I learnt from hiring 40 junior candidates in 18 months

When I started managing hiring seriously, I had the theory pretty clear. I had read the books, taken the courses, and knew what the literature said about competencies, behavioural interviews and culture fit assessment. Eighteen months and 40 hires later, I have a rather different relationship with that theory.

The first thing I learnt: CVs predict less than you think

Of the 40 people we hired, those who performed best in the first six months were not the ones with the most comprehensive CVs. They were the ones who had asked more specific questions during the interview.

Not standard questions like "what is the company culture like?". Specific questions about the actual job: "What is the biggest problem the team I’m joining is currently facing?" or "What didn’t work with the previous person in this role?"

In our experience, the ability to ask uncomfortable and relevant questions correlated with better performance than any other indicator we were able to measure.

The second thing: process speed matters more than rigour

I lost three excellent candidates because of an excessive process. All three had passed two stages, were at the third, and received another offer while waiting for our decision. In all three cases, the additional stage would not have changed our final decision.

Since then, every stage of the process has had to be justified by a specific question that you cannot answer in any other way. If you cannot formulate that question, you remove the stage.

The third thing: onboarding is part of the recruitment process

The decision to stay or leave is made in the first 30 days. And that decision is influenced by things that happen before the candidate arrives: whether their equipment is set up, whether someone is there to meet them, and whether they know what is expected of them in that first week.

Of the 40 hires, the four who resigned before six months shared a pattern: improvised onboarding, a manager without time to support their integration, and a lack of clarity about short-term expectations.

The fourth thing: diversity of background improves team quality

We hired people from private and public universities, from vocational training and degree programmes, and from large and small cities. Differences in performance did not follow any pattern related to the type of education. They did follow a pattern related to specific motivation for the role and the ability to communicate clearly.

What I would do differently

If I were starting again, I would do three things from day one: define success criteria for each role before starting the search, assign a buddy to each new joiner during their first week, and measure candidate satisfaction with the process regardless of whether they were hired or not.

That last metric, the rejected candidate experience, gives the most insight into the real health of your recruitment process. And it is the one fewest companies measure.