Member-only story

Start with a hiring plan, not a job description

Janessa Lantz
5 min readJan 12, 2020

One of the most valuable lessons I took away from my time at HubSpot is how to run a good hiring process. I’m at a ~16 person startup now and I no longer have the recruiting support I had at HubSpot, but for my first hire (it’s for an events manager role if you’re interested ❤️) , I tried take some of the things I learned at HubSpot and apply them to the early-stage startup environment.

I wanted to walk through the early stages of that process (the hiring plan) in case it’s valuable for others out there.

Why you need a hiring plan

First, hiring doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You’re going to need to bring people into the process and they’re going to need to understand why you’re hiring for a role and how to contribute. And good collaboration always begins with a plan.

Second, a hiring plan is your first line of defense in removing bias from the hiring process. By being clear about your intentions for this role and creating guidelines throughout the process, you can begin to correct for bias the bias that creeps into less structured processes.

Third, a hiring plan helps you to move fast. You’re competing for talent with companies that are far more well known then you and can probably offer more money. But offering a great candidate experience goes…

--

--

Janessa Lantz
Janessa Lantz

Written by Janessa Lantz

Building the marketing team at dbt Labs

No responses yet