Experience taught us that successfully hiring during the pandemic requires a careful balance of rigor and flexibility.

Hiring is never an easy task. When a company expands its leadership team with essential positions that will help accelerate growth, the stakes are even higher.

At Relay Network, a growing software company selling a new customer experience solution to enterprises, we have a phrase that we use to describe the impact of one single action. We call it “pebble in the pond” effect. What happens when you drop a pebble in the pond? It sends waves outward, impacting everything around it. When you drop a weighty leadership role into a small company, it has an outsized impact. Will that impact be positive or negative?

The right person needs to be skilled at what they do, respect the company’s journey, see where the company needs to go next, and be a change agent who gets it there. That’s a tall order. Hiring people of this caliber at a time when the pandemic has dramatically changed the rules of engagement only adds to the challenge.

Relay stepped up to that challenge in March 2020 when our company of 50 employees began the process of hiring seven key team members, including a Chief Financial Officer, a Chief Product Officer, a Director of Sales Enablement and Operations, a Director of Human Resources, an Account Executive, and two Business Development Representatives.

This is how we adapted our hiring process and filled these roles that will enable our company to scale rapidly over the next few years.

Be ruthlessly specific in defining the need for the hire.

One of our strengths at Relay is that we are innovative and expansive. We see the possibilities in everything. However, those qualities sometimes work against us in recruiting. The candidates we pursued needed to meet very specific criteria, and to screen them effectively and efficiently, we needed to narrow the hiring parameters and stay focused. The talent experts on our value creation team at LLR Partners pushed us to define exactly what we needed and screen candidates with rigorous intention.

Part of this process involved relying on what we called “inter-rater reliability”— a continuous feedback-and-refinement loop between the hiring manager and the recruiter that narrowed the criteria throughout the process. We never missed a weekly status call and exchanged feedback constantly with a goal of achieving an inter-rater reliability of one hundred percent, which meant we could both agree completely on the same candidate. Not only did this enable us to make an offer with confidence, it also enabled the candidate to accept with confidence, and at a time when restrictions and physical distancing prevent both parties from connecting in many of the normal ways, building in a high degree of certainty was invaluable.

Respect the comfort levels of each candidate.

The goalposts around candidates’ comfort zones are constantly moving during this pandemic, and each person we interviewed had a unique set of preferences and limitations. Some wanted to see the company culture and workplace in action, while others preferred to meet in an outdoor location with social distancing in place. We made sure that our candidates felt as though they could share their preferences with us. We also got creative about finding options that worked. In 20 years of recruiting, I had never found myself taking a walk with a candidate before: now I’ve taken a few.

Executives should also be ready to get creative in order to find one-on-one time with candidates. Our co-founder met with one of our candidates at the Jersey Shore because they both happened to be there at the same time. Our CEO met a candidate for a highly strategic CFO hire at a location where they could meet outdoors in safety. What is most important is to respect each individual’s choices and be open to changing the way you engage at any point.

It is better to start over on a firm foundation than to let a desire to maintain the momentum propel you in the wrong direction.

 

Don’t be afraid to pivot in the middle of the hiring process.

For one of the senior roles we were looking to fill, we realized part-way through the process that we had miscalculated the need and underestimated the operational execution component of this particular role.

It can feel counterproductive to pivot in the middle of the hiring process, especially if you’ve already dedicated time and resources to attracting and screening candidates who fit the original requirements. However, pivoting is never a waste of time. For a growth company, the hiring journey itself can sometimes deliver new insights that allow you to redefine the requirements. It is better to start over on a firm foundation than to let a desire to maintain the momentum propel you in the wrong direction.

The success of our hiring process during this unusually disorienting time relied on the entire leadership team committing their time and energy to the project.

Spend the extra time to confirm the right fit for the role.

Some people believe that embedding too many interviewers in the recruiting process places undue pressure on the candidate and consumes too many resources for the company. We knew that as a small, growth-oriented company — especially one conducting strategic hiring during a pandemic — drawing on multiple perspectives was essential to our success.

For example, we knew that the selection of our Chief Product Officer would be a game changer in terms of how Relay would grow, enter new markets, and innovate. After narrowing our search, every member of our executive team met with each candidate one on one and in groups. After every interview, I debriefed with the interviewers one on one, posed follow-up questions, gathered and consolidated the feedback, and brought it to our CEO for the final decision.

The success of our hiring process during this unusually disorienting time relied on the entire leadership team committing their time and energy to the project. I asked my peers and the company leaders, including our CEO, President, and CMO, to participate, engage and provide feedback on the candidates — not just once, but day after day. In some cases, the process involved as few as six candidates, with a candidate selected in as little as 43 days. In others, we went through the process with as many as 15 candidates and didn’t close for 157 days. Considerable effort and stamina are required.

Here’s the bottom line.

Hiring well is absolutely critical for a growth company, and the pandemic has made it more challenging than ever. Our experience taught us that hiring successfully during this time requires a careful balance of rigor and flexibility. We were rigorous when setting criteria, processes, and timelines. We were flexible when it came to candidate engagement and rethinking role requirements.

By following these practices, we were able to fill all seven roles with people we know will be instrumental in helping Relay grow and taking our company to its next level of market leadership. The success of our hiring process during this unusually disorienting time relied on the entire leadership team committing their time and energy to the project.


Next, read Creative Onboarding Ideas for a Remote Work Environment by my colleague Katelyn Matthews to learn how we ensure the newest members of Relay’s team feel as welcomed and supported as those who joined the company when we all worked under one roof.