Hiring & Onboarding

Episode 2 is all about hiring and onboarding. Matt and Alex discuss different techniques for sourcing candidates, how they screen and interview candidates with their topgrading process, how to close candidates, and how to effectively onboard new hires.

We believe great management makes the world a better place. At Clearbit, we’re writing a handbook to train our managers, and we’re sharing it online at themanagershandbook.com. Each episode of this podcast accompanies a chapter of the book, and we get on the mic to discuss it in-depth, covering topics from hiring to conflict resolution to developing consciousness as a leader.
The Manager’s Handbook Podcast is hosted by Matt Sornson (CMO) and Alex MacCaw (CEO) of Clearbit.

Resources

Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart

The 15 Commitments Of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Klemp

Benchmark

Lever Recruiting Software

The Manager’s Handbook

What we’ll learn about on this episode:

(00:57) - Why hiring is a manager’s most important job - “You’re going to make your job a lot easier by hiring the right people.”

(03:42) - Designing the perfect role proposal - “You need to indicate that you've thought about alternatives and that there really is no alternative to hiring this person.”

(14:44) - On sourcing diverse candidates - “It's been very cool to watch as we do become more diverse, it becomes easier to source diverse candidates.

(18:25) - The Top-grading interview - “You are trying to understand the candidate’s stories and patterns. These are predictive of the candidate’s future performance.”

(21:57) - The Focused interview - “The idea is to ask the same questions again and again to each different candidate so you can compare the answers.”

(23:33) - The Values interview - “If you’re testing for the value of ‘Craft’, we have a list of questions that might give you an idea if they really care about their craft. Do they have a blog, have they published any written works, do they know experts in the field, do other people seek their advice.”

(25:27) - The final step of reference checking - “At this point, you might have some incredible candidates and you might be tempted to skip the reference check. That's never a good idea.”

(29:31) - On closing candidates: What if you really just needed to connect with someone as a human? - “The closing process is a place you can demonstrate to the candidate that you’re going on a journey together and it’s gonna be amazing.”

(36:45) - The best way to make an offer - “The key thing is not to make the offer until you're sure they're going to accept it.”

(41:04) - Welcoming and onboarding your freshly recruited candidate - “I don't think you've actually hired someone until you've onboarded them properly.”

About Clearbit:

Clearbit is the marketing data engine for customer interactions, made with love in the heart of San Francisco. If you want more details on how we help businesses grow, please see our solutions, products, and integrations at clearbit.com. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn, and tell us what you think.

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