The HR Albatross – Hire Slow and Fire Fast….

JPIE’s has got a post up about a topic that is the albatross of HR people everywhere.  Hire slow and fire fast.  One’s a concept that HR people should like (hire slow, get the right person), one’s an expectation of operators everywhere that, when someone’s not working out, it shouldn’t take more than about 45 minutes to move on.

JPIE’s take is a good one, since it focuses on what I will call "Talent Pipeline Guy".  From the esteemed J. William Tincup at JPIE:

"Hire Slow – I once worked for a guy that believed strongly in queuing up talent.  He was always interviewing – no matter what cash flow said to be doing.  Sometimes he’d talk a superior candidate down to a more reasonable salary.  Sometimes he’d have open discussions with a candidate for 6-9 months before the actual offer letter and/or hire.  He was queuing up talent.  When cash flow said to hire – he already had 10 strong candidates for each open position.  I know, I know – that seems like a lot of time, money and energy for what upside.  Just in time – talent?  Something to ponder.

Or is “hiring slow” a metaphor for rationalism?  In hiring slow, checking references, discussing alignment, managing expectations – the process takes longer and one weeds out and/or validates candidates in a way that emotional hiring won’t allow.  Not sure.  Maybe hiring slow is a mixture of both – having a solid pipeline of talent and being more deliberate in hiring."

As for me, I like knowing where the talent is.  The problem with putting people you are targeting in a formal process is that from the candidate’s perspective, the clock is always ticking.  For the best candidates, it takes about two to three weeks after the interview process, and they’re gone mentally.  I think you would need to code the whole "interviewing before you have a position" thing as networking, rather than interviewing, to manage the candidate’s expectations.

More on the concept of fire fast, hire slow from a much younger HR Capitalist…