Mod. 3 Reflection - Re-Imagining the Hiring Process

What have you experimented with and/or found works particularly well in your current hiring processes that you think might be of interest to this group?

Like Ryan, I found this assignment to be very challenging. My primary influences for hiring come from my time working at Danny Meyer's restaurant Union Square Cafe. Danny's hiring philosophy outlined in his best selling book Setting The Table outlines a hiring practice rooted in what he calls the 51% Principle. The idea is that the technical skills of being a server are 49% of the job and the way you make people feel is 51%. I've applied that principle in all of my subsequent jobs and found it to be largely successful when also filtered through the question "Would I invite this person to my house for dinner?" While it's not a very technical process for hiring, I have found its simplicity allows for less stress on both sides of the hiring table, adds an interpersonal dynamic to the hiring process, and both parties leave the interview walking away with the information they need in order to move forward.

What are you taking with you from this module that will influence how your team and organization creates a (more) inclusive process to recruit, hire, and onboard team members?

Both the Biases Chart and the White Supremacy Culture article opened my eyes to how extractive the hiring process can be and has given me tools that I can share with colleagues in future job searches.

Where are you still challenged in this work?

I am still challenged by the extractive nature of interviewing candidates and the overly protective nature of hiring committees. Referring again to my time at Union Square Cafe, I saw nearly 100 interviews for various positions when I worked there. At no point in any of them was there a sense in which the hiring manager was charged with asking the candidate questions that would weed out whether or not they represented a possible threat to the organization if they were hired.

What support can those in this group offer in service of this work?

I'd love to know if you all share these feelings and if so, what strategies you've found for working around them. I'd also love to know what other alternative hiring practices and processes you may have been a part of and if/how they've been successful.