25 slides on recruiting, no pictures, lots of bullet points, read it anyway

If you are having problems explaining the recruiting process, process step participants and owners, the overall goals of the recruiting program, and even the desired outcomes to your team, your hiring managers, or even your leaders - then I think you would do a lot worse than to share and walk them through this simple, 25-slide deck from legendary Silicon Vallley VC Daniel Portillo. (the slides are embedded below as well, email and RSS (are there any of those left?), will need to click through).

Recruiting: Good to Great from Daniel Portillo

The money lines from my point of view (assuming you are way too busy to look at 25 slides) with some SMB comments after each point

Slide 5 - The goal of recruiting is more than just a repeatable process, it is about crafting an overall experience.

SB - Definitely needed, and definitely requires that you have the time to take a step back and be really thoughtful and mindful of the overall process/experience. This is more than 'we should treat rejected candidates well', in fact it is probably more about how to treat highly desired and hard to find candidates in a way that respects their time and career aspirations.

Slide 7 - When 'setting up' the candidate, make sure you understand what will the person work on the first 3, 6, 12 months? Why is it interesting?

SB - If you can't 'sell' what is interesting about the job, no one with a decent other option, (including staying at the job they have now), will give you a second thought. If the job isn't inherently interesting, then there had better be some other compelling factors you can push to the center of the table, (insane comp, telework, lots of stock, etc.).

Slide 9 - Who are the decision makers? Parents, wife, kids, etc…

SB - Does anyone, I mean anyone, take a new job without at least talking it over with someone close to them? Do you factor that in at all? You probably should.

Slide 15 - When in the 'evaluation' stage - Make sure you ask:  'When have you gone out of your way to do something or learn a skill that wasn’t required?'

SB - Probably my favorite line of the deck. Speaks to curiosity, ambition, engagement  - all the things we say are important to organizations today.

Slide 17 - 'Don't hire someone to be the weakest person on the team.'

SB - I like this one too, and have never seen it before. But you have to think about any new hires impact and effect on your existing team before bringing someone new on board. Being the new guy/gal is hard enough - if the team figures out that the new hire is also not all that talented then you have a flame out waiting to happen.

Slide 22 - On what kills the candidate experience? One thing is 'People who don't know what the hell they are talking about.'

SB - This one cuts right to the candidate feeling that their time is being wasted. Everyone you put in front of the candidate should understand the process, the role, and why this candidate in particular is being considered. This is a by-product of companies simply including too many people in the process in what is usually a CYA move set up by someone.

Slide 25  On compensation for tech talent that have lots of options - 'Companies are essentially paying 2 years ahead of current experience.'

SB - This one is really simple, but bears repeating especially for 'non-tech' companies that do need to bring in engineers and developers from time to time. You have no shot at competing for the 'top' talent if you don't raise the comp to what everyone in your shop will consider is overpaying. That is just the way this market works right now.

Ok, that's it from me on this. Take a look at the deck if you are interested and let me know what you think. 

I'm just happy to see a simple, plain, boring deck full of words and bullet points still be so interesting and compelling that it didn't matter how simple and boring it was.

Happy Wednesday.