Let's not make hiring so complicated

More and more companies are making their hiring processes overly complicated and longwinded. It's become commonplace to hear about companies having five or more rounds of interviews in a hiring process. What's the advantage for them? It's certainly not an advantage for the candidate, for whom it's a lengthy and often frustrating experience.

Why oh why?

What are they getting from so many interviews? As someone who has hired a lot of people over my career, I simply don't understand it. Are they trying to second-guess what you won't find out until someone is actually doing the role for real? Or are they simply frightened of hiring the wrong people?

You're not going to know everything about a candidate by making them sit through more and more interviews!

Putting talent at the heart of hiring

At FoundryOS, we have a simple set of principles when it comes to hiring, based around putting talent first:

• Transparency - we'll always be clear about the process and what to expect.
• Compatibility - we'll meet you initially so we understand a level of compatibility between you and us before asking you to commit time to our process.
• Simplicity - we only have 2 stages of interview and explain what each stage is about at the start of the process.
• Honesty - we'll always be open with feedback and won't give you generic answers or phrases like "another candidate was better suited to the role".

We recognise that talent is what makes us successful, and we want people to be enthused by our hiring process, not confused by it.

We want our candidates to know what to expect and not be left waiting for feedback or not knowing what comes next.

Not everyone is right

Having said all that, not everyone is going to be right - every company is different and FoundryOS is too. We are very much startup in nature and it means we expect different things compared to other companies. There is a level of chaos in startups, but it also brings real opportunities too.

Interviewers have to be honest about what it means to work for their company and use that to shape some of the discussions at interview. I'd rather hear a candidate say "it sounds great but it's not really for me" than just push on through the process regardless. This can only come from honesty and transparency - it can't be all sell, sell, sell!

Joining a new company is a leap of faith for the employee, too. No matter what people have told me about their team and the role over the years, its always been different in reality when I've landed on the ground and started working.

Companies also need to recognise that they won't get every hiring decision right. That's why everyone has probation periods, right?

We shouldn't hide from that. The probation period is something you can leverage when it's simply not working out, either as a new starter or as the employer.

At FoundryOS, we use probation as a path to success when you join us. We set clear goals and expectations that allow new starters to prove themselves from day one and grow into their role.

Join us, be you

We're always looking for talented people who want to contribute as themselves and be their authentic self. "Embrace your weird" is something we say to our teams!

Take a look at our careers page and see what roles we have right now.