ExperimentFirst
Unit of Wheelhouse Venture Partners
Building hiring managers' capacity and capability to deliver low-cost-high-impact hiring
Our why: Reflecting on our previous roles as hiring managers, the most impactful hires we made, were when we innovated on the job-design. Yet when you think of innovation you naturally think of 'new products, services and business models'. There is usually no mention of 'people innovation'. Recruiter's will take your specs, but never question you on the business-case or the fundamental design of the role.
Hiring for a new role that hasn't existed before in your team or organisation, is not too dissimilar to setting up a startup, in that 90%+ (of your job spec) is assumptions and hypotheses. If these are not resolved now, it will most certainly result in lower quality/impact hire.
Our answer to this problem: - virtual [hiring] incubators
With our Virtual [Hiring] Incubators, we work with hiring managers, to directly build their capacity and capability to hire fast, and achieve quality of hire.
In under 60 minutes for each step, we help hiring managers to develop a strong business case for new hires, create an engaging job canvas that resonates with high quality candidates, leverage their networks and network's networks with sourcing, role specific interview questions and exercises for selection, and help hiring managers with onboarding to deliver quick wins from their new hire.
Sourcing
Applicants
Selection
Onboard
Impact
Choose from one or more sprints
"When we approve new hires, we typically see the cases in the form of budget line items. We do not have a standard process by which to evaluate hiring cases objectively (independent of hiring manager relationships with different senior leaders), that are aligned to strategy execution, and track return on investment of each new hire"
"We find that hiring managers don't do a lot of the ground-work and testing of the hypotheses. They forget the bit before job description - the testing of their needs for the role, running experiments, defining needs of different internal stakeholders and then building robust clear business case is often missing in most hiring requests that come to us... "
"managers' need additional resources but find it difficult to pitch a compelling hiring case for new hires. Those that are 'more vocal' and have better relationships, end up getting more hires approved"
"hiring managers are having lots of conversations 3+ months before the annual budgeting but these conversations (collaboration) are not structured, transparent, captured, or executed in a strategic or efficient way (in docs/emails)".
Senior leaders
Hiring managers
Get the hiring-case (the why) wrong, the rest of the hiring becomes time consuming and costly when measured in terms of Return on Investment
Frustrations
"We recently hired a tax attorney. 2 months after hiring it became clear to the hiring manager there weren't enough tax issues from clients. We then let go of this tax attorney, after spending $8K on her training, another $10K in recruitment fees, $2K in time spent onboarding her role/meetings etc, $20K in severance package, 2 months of loss in billable hours with an alternative of hiring corporate attorney = $50K+ of 'waste' (Anonymous law firm)
Had we had a 'hiring canvas' with which to help our hiring managers to be thoughtful and strategic in requesting new hires, we would have saved money, time and stress across our many departments
Coaching + Tools
to turn hypothesis laden and opaque requests for new hires, during your annual budgeting process
This tool is a strategic asset for hiring planning, which can be easily connected to your quarterly or annual budgeting process
into a simple, one-page, under 60 minutes to complete (first draft), for hiring managers to create an effective narrative behind each new hire request
with the goal(s) of
Hiring-case saves time and money by not hiring for roles that weren't fully thought out or hiring at the wrong level or by not prioritising hiring for the roles with the most value
Increase alignment between HR (people), business units (execution) and senior management (strategy) to create a more agile organisation
We deliver coaching with this tool. We work with hiring managers (not as recruiters), as partners, to build an exceptional (tested) business case for new hire
Track Return on Investment of each new hire, ensuring budgets are approved for the roles that bring the most value to the organisation, those that are both important and urgent hires
Enabling senior leaders to save money and make effective hiring decisions
"With hiring managers rarely giving us the time, we end up having to create our best guess job-specs. With the hiring case, we were able to create a job-spec really fast" Recruiter
What users are saying
"The hiring case really helped us evaluate which roles we should keep in our reorganisation, which we should redefine, and which to eliminate" CFO
"We were building out a new function, using the hiring case we were able to convince senior management to take the risks with new roles which never existed in our organisation before" Hiring manager
"With the hiring canvas, our hiring managers are always hiring, allowing us to be flexible with who our strategy requires rather than being locked into the annual budgeting process" HR Director