Becoming a Hiring Leader: Final Tips and Best Practices
Recap of the Bar Raiser Process
The Bar Raiser process is a cornerstone of Amazon's hiring strategy, ensuring consistent quality across all hires. Here's why it's effective:
- Provides an objective, third-party perspective in hiring decisions
- Ensures candidates are evaluated against company-wide standards, not just team-specific needs
- Helps maintain a high bar for talent across the organization
- Reduces bias in the hiring process by including a non-stakeholder in the decision
- Encourages thorough evaluation of candidates against Leadership Principles
- Promotes long-term thinking in hiring decisions, focusing on candidates' potential for growth
- Facilitates knowledge sharing of best hiring practices across the company
Top 5 Takeaways for Improving Your Hiring Process
Implement a structured interview process with clear evaluation criteria based on your company's core values or principles.
Train interviewers thoroughly, ensuring they understand how to assess candidates objectively and ask effective behavioral questions.
Include a diverse panel of interviewers to gain multiple perspectives and reduce bias in hiring decisions.
Focus on candidates' long-term potential and cultural fit, not just their immediate skills or experience.
Establish a feedback and debrief process that allows for thorough discussion and consensus-building among interviewers.
Adopting Amazon's Best Practices in Your Company
While every company is unique, many of Amazon's hiring practices can be adapted to improve your own recruitment process:
- Define your company's core principles or values and use them as a foundation for candidate evaluation
- Implement a "bar raiser" equivalent - a trained, objective party in hiring decisions
- Use behavioral interviewing techniques to assess past performance and future potential
- Develop a structured written feedback process for interviewers
- Create a thorough onboarding process that sets new hires up for success from day one
- Continuously refine your hiring process based on data and feedback
- Invest in interviewer training to ensure consistent, high-quality evaluations
Remember, the goal is not to replicate Amazon's process exactly, but to adapt its best elements to fit your company's unique culture and needs.