Raise the Bar With Every Hire!

They have raised the bar in recruitment! So now I have high standards!

For the past few years, there have been many changes in recruitment and a constant drive, not only in innovation, (did you know that there are over a dozen of them 😱 — ATS), but also in trying to make “the interview “ format different.

There has been a constant need to change and adapt to modern times and get a fresh outlook on the processes. You could start with HR and through the process meet the CTO, the CPO, the CHRO, the CMO … or whoever feels it’s important to meet the candidates at any given time.

I know, I work in tech recruitment so my exposure to different ways of doing things has been quite broad, although — let’s all remember — the recipe may be different but we are still cooking a meal.

Even so, there’s a particular way of doing things which intrigued me and when challenged on writing about a topic, I found that there may be a lot of people who have experienced this. This particular process is about the “Bar Raiser” interview process and how candidates may or may not benefit from it.

There is a little unknown company, called Amazon (you guys have probably never heard of them) who established a programme which focused on maintaining a certain hiring standard. It was called the “barkeeper program”, and in fact stated that “every hire should be better than 50 percent of people in similar roles”

What is a 'Bar Raiser' at Amazon?

The most interesting part was that this was defined in 1999 (over 20 years ago) and is still used to this day. It has even been adopted in a similar way by other companies like Google or Facebook 😱

What makes the bar raiser interview so interesting, to me at least, is the fact that the person deemed to be the bar raiser is the ultimate “judge” about the candidates success and admission into a company!!

They are the culture thermometer, heavily trained in interviewing and by default they have roles which are not directly connected with the area the person is being interviewed for.

This emphasis in culture raising and having people strive for better hires is truly great but at the end of the day:

· How does the candidate feel about it?

· Has he just finished with the final boss?

· Does he feel like he just finished a 5K marathon?

Not only related with exhaustion of the candidate, I have noticed more and more companies seem to have been adopting an habit of complex culture matching instead of company matching, forgetting about a simple fact, they are not a FAANG Company.
👇 you can check here what this acronym means 👇

shttps://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/faang-stocks.asp#:~:text=FAANG%20is%20an%20acronym%20referring,(formerly%20known%20as%20Google

And the best part is, they are asking for their HR or their Team Leads (or whoever) to hire people with the bar raiser attitude without being clear on how to raise the bar or even having jobs that will allow them to do it. 🙄

So, as someone who has seen candidates being rejected or accepted for several reasons, below you can find what I believe to have worked so well (or not) for the teams, and in fact shows a bar raiser attitude as an employer:

• Forget the clones!
  When you are hiring someone new it’s important to have in mind what the task is and what is to be expected of that person — don’t try to hire based on “ I want someone like the CTO”. If you want someone to raise the bar it’s important to add to the culture and not just to be like “someone” else;
• Be transparent!
  Don’t make promises you can’t commit to just because you’re desperate to hire and make sure to inform the candidates about the hurdles and fun they will be facing;
• Pick well what culture is to you!
  Having the main reason of rejection of a company being “doesn’t match culturally” is truly vague and ambiguous. It’s important to decide what you are expecting to ascertain and bear in mind the answers are an exemple of this.

I hope you liked it!
I was challenged to write something and have wanted to address this subject for a while now.

It’s not an article where we try to break ‘that’ friend (that’s being in this industry for some time now), it’s just a reflection about how when copying or imitating the success of other companies might in fact create a bottleneck in the recruitment process even before it started. I believe that above all, the practice of interviewing and recruiting has to benefit all people involved, either being a candidate or an employer who has a role to fill.

If you wanted to discuss, share your opinion or add a suggestion, I would be glad to change notes!
You can reach me on LinkedIn :) I love to debate these issues, it’s kind of my thing.

About Damia Portugal:
We are an international innovative IT recruitment company with over 25 years of experience working across all levels, from support right up to executive board level, with our HQ based on the UK.

We came to Portugal with the promise to shake up the market and redefine how one engages with clients. Our core goal is to develop relationships across the market, offer a disruptive (but positive!) approach with both clients and candidates, always based on open and transparent communication.

We take the stresses out of recruitment and engage the right professionals who will excel in your organization.

We use out-of-the-box sourcing techniques.
We are innovative, disruptive, transparent and relaxed.
We came to the market to do it different and we love it!

Wrote by António Wecki:
He’s a Tech Recruiter with a mission to create a positive FORCE in IT recruitment. Also known as Wecki, some claim he’s our Damia fashion icon — he claims he has the best hair in Damia (always showing off his haircut on zoom calls).
A true geek, he’s part of the Damia Group Portugal team and the ‘tech’ world is his beach 🏖 For him the art of looking for candidates and “turning rocks” on the internet it’s an art that must be shared! He’s always ready to discuss recruitment matters or if you want dragon ball, Pókemon, Netflix series… Pass him the ball.