“The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world.”— Steve Jobs
Building a Hiring Practice That Works: Lessons from the Trenches of Talent Acquisition
Hiring is one of the most consequential activities any company undertakes. It determines not just who builds the product, sells it, or supports it—but who shapes the culture, challenges the status quo, and leads the future. Yet despite its importance, hiring is often riddled with inconsistency, compliance risks, and inefficiency. Building a hiring practice that is equitable, compliant, and effective across departments and company stages is no small feat.
A Brief History of Hiring: From Rolodex to Regulation
Recruiting has evolved significantly from handshake deals and paper resumes. In the post-industrial era, hiring was often informal and driven by local networks. By the 1980s and 1990s, recruiting became more formalized, with HR departments rising in prominence and the advent of job boards like Monster.com and CareerBuilder.
The early 2000s brought Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), and the rise of LinkedIn revolutionized talent sourcing. With the growth of SaaS businesses, remote work, and global teams, hiring practices needed to adapt fast. At the same time, growing regulation—from the ADA and EEOC to state-level salary transparency laws—added compliance complexity. Meanwhile, DEI-focused hiring practices have emerged not just as a moral imperative but a business one.
What Good Looks Like: Thought Leaders and Exemplars
Companies like Stripe, Spotify, and Atlassian are often lauded for their structured, transparent, and thoughtful hiring processes. They use data to track hiring funnel effectiveness, have diverse panels, and emphasize structured interviews to reduce bias.
Laszlo Bock, former SVP of People Operations at Google and author of Work Rules!, is a pioneer in this space. He popularized the use of structured interviews, the debunking of brain teasers, and using hiring committees to reduce individual bias. Companies that follow similar frameworks often build hiring as a core competency, not an afterthought.
What Bad Looks Like: Anti-patterns and Pitfalls
On the flip side, many early-stage or fast-scaling companies fall into traps:
- Hiring reactively and without structured interviews.
- Ghosting candidates or extending exploding offers.
- Asking illegal or inappropriate questions (“Do you plan to have children?”).
- Using untrained interviewers or confusing processes with inconsistent evaluation criteria.
Companies that don’t invest early in a hiring practice often face high turnover, legal risk, and a damaged employer brand.
Compliance: What You Can and Cannot Ask
Hiring managers must navigate a complex regulatory landscape:
- Federal Law (EEOC, ADA, Civil Rights Act) prohibits discrimination based on race, gender, religion, age, disability, etc.
- State Laws vary significantly:
- California prohibits asking about salary history.
- Colorado, New York, and Washington now require salary ranges in job postings.
- Massachusetts enforces strict rules around non-competes.
- Illinois requires disclosing the use of AI in video interviews.
Questions to Avoid:
- “What’s your current salary?” (Illegal in many states)
- “Are you married?” or “Do you plan to have children?”
- “How old are you?” or “What year did you graduate?”
- “Where are you from originally?”
Instead, stick to job-relevant questions, use structured interview rubrics, and ensure all candidates go through the same process.
Hiring Across Company Stages
- Early Stage (0–50 employees):
- Hiring is often founder-led.
- Speed and culture fit dominate.
- Risks: bias, lack of diversity, over-reliance on referrals.
- Growth Stage (50–500 employees):
- Need for structured interviews, ATS (e.g., Greenhouse, Lever).
- Introduction of scorecards, DEI goals, interviewer training.
- Enterprise Stage (500+):
- Mature HR teams with TA, People Ops, and L&D.
- Focus on employer branding, internal mobility, and data-driven hiring.
- Legal compliance becomes critical, including audits and metrics tracking.
Hiring by Function: A Domain-Specific Approach
Each department requires a tailored approach:
- Engineering
- Typical Process: Recruiter screen → Technical screen → Take-home or live coding → System design → Culture panel.
- Tools: CoderPad, HackerRank, CodeSignal, GitHub reviews.
- Product Management
- Typical Process: Product case study → Strategy interview → Cross-functional panel.
- Focus: Problem-solving, cross-team communication, roadmap thinking.
- UX/UX Research
- Typical Process: Portfolio review → Design challenge or heuristic critique → Research methods discussion.
- Focus: Empathy, design thinking, usability testing.
- Sales
- Typical Process: Role-play scenarios → Quota history discussion → Manager interview.
- Tools: Bravado, Chorus call reviews, CRM experience evaluation.
- Sales Engineering
- Typical Process: Technical pitch → Live demo → Objection handling.
- Focus: Technical depth + customer-facing clarity.
- Customer Success
- Typical Process: Behavioral interviews → Customer interaction scenarios → Metrics focus.
- Focus: Retention, empathy, communication, product knowledge.
Tools of the Trade: Building a Modern Hiring Stack
- ATS: Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable
- Interview Platforms: BrightHire, Metaview, Guide, Interviewing.io
- Assessments: Codility, Woven, TestGorilla (non-technical too)
- Scheduling: GoodTime, Calendly
- DEI & Bias Tools: SeekOut, Textio, Blendoor
- Onboarding: Rippling, BambooHR, Sapling
Recommendations for Hiring Managers
- Know the law in your state and city—and train your interviewers.
- Use structured interviews and clear rubrics aligned to competencies.
- Tailor the process by domain—but ensure consistency across roles.
- Never rush the process—urgency does not excuse bad hiring.
- Involve cross-functional peers—they’ll be working with this person too.
- Document everything—decisions, scores, feedback.
- Measure outcomes—time-to-hire, candidate experience, performance at 6 months.
Wrapping up…
Hiring isn’t a transactional process—it’s a long-term investment. The best companies treat it like a product: they iterate, improve, and measure. They hire not just for roles but for missions. As organizations grow, so must their hiring practices—moving from intuition to insight, from urgency to intentionality.
Hiring well is hard. But hiring well is worth it.
