Avoiding Harmful Hiring Process

Hiring is hard, and hiring processes heavily reflect the organisation. Find out signs that mean you might want to avoid somewhere as a candidate, and things you can improve as a workplace to attract and select better people.

Maybe you hire people yourself, maybe you’re an interviewer or applicant reviewer, or maybe you’re trying to get yourself hired - chances are you’re exposed to a hiring process somehow.

There’s so many things people can do that are inadvertently problematic, and they’re easily done without realising.

I’ll go through a selection of actions and practices, and how they can be improved, so you can avoid them and do better!

This talk comes from a lot of advice I’ve given informally and professionally.

I ran a rough early version of it at PyCon UK 2018 - “How (Not) To Screw Up Your Hiring” - it was well received, but definitely had a lot of room for improvement (I was also helping to run the conference itself at the time). Avoiding Harmful Hiring Process shares the basic ideas, but adds much more nuance and context.