Following my post on how to prepare for your startup’s first large-scale recruitment, here’s a heads-up on what our first meeting is going to look like.
All recruiting processes start the same - with a kickoff meeting. The kickoff meeting is the single most important step of the recruiting process! It sets the tone for our whole journey together and is crucial to the experience the candidates are about to go through.
Ideally, we should exit the meeting when we’re all on the same page regarding the characteristics of that elusive creature we’re all after - The Right Candidate (or as I like to call it, “a purple hair & orange eyes’ candidate).
An excellent kickoff meeting in my dictionary is short but insightful; My mission is to ask the right questions to help me determine what kind of candidates I should look for. Your mission is, well, answering my questions.
I make it my business (well, it is!) to do my research and show up well prepared for our kickoff meeting. Here are some questions I might ask you, the hiring manager, so you can be as prepared as I am:
1. How would you know you have the right candidate when you finally meet them? This question helps you understand precisely who you’re looking for.
2. If you could duplicate one person on your team, who would it be at this time, and why? That’s how we find out what skills and qualities your team is missing the most right now.
3. What are three requirements of a candidate that you can absolutely not give up on, and why? Answering this question sometimes makes you realize what skills can be acquired on the job, thus extending your candidate pool.
4. And a question I like to ask employees who recently joined the company: What made you choose to work here and what makes you stay? This one helps me create your company’s unique recruiting - pitch, which, as you must already know, we’ll discuss in one of my next posts.
I hope this gave you some food for thought. I’m always amazed at how those questions help my clients refine their abstract wants into concrete needs.
Now you’re ready to join our kickoff meeting! See you there!
