Are We Hiring for Day 1 Effectiveness or Day 365 Greatness?

As technology innovation increases, so does the demand from business teams to deliver new capabilities faster. This friction is often felt during interviewing and hiring new team members. Effective hiring demands finding the right balance of salary, existing skills, enablement plans, potential, team readiness to train, and cultural fit. Every organization has a different perspective on which of these are negotiable during hiring and how that must be balanced by increased technical experience or soft skills in other domains.

This intersection of risks associated with bad hires includes lack of cultural fit, technical ability, motivation, and poor priority management. All of these risks can lead to a situation where organizations have hiring paralysis. This can manifest when each interviewer has differing concerns and no shared framework for when and how the new hire will be effective in the role. In the worst cases, companies will hire someone who truly has the potential to make a positive impact but is handicapped by unrealistic expectations or lack of enablement.

Before starting any interview process, the interview team should agree on key elements, including an expected path to full efficiency for a new employee and the shared level of organizational enablement to bring them up to speed on company-specific business processes, industry requirements, technology stack, priorities, team planning, and governance. A primary agreement point is the level of investment in time and training the team agrees to make to enable the new hire to be effective. This has the largest impact on the new team members' ability to get up to speed quickly and feel comfortable asking for assistance as they navigate the organization. It will directly affect when the individual hits a milestone of maximum impact. Day 1 effectiveness varies from day 365 greatness in a few key ways;

• Day 1 Effectiveness - Primarily focused on administrative roles, characterized by following processes, checking boxes, and moving work from point A to point B. These types of roles provide for consistency in execution within an organization and are best suited to be effective from day 1 through well-documented processes and tools that automate workflows.
• Day 365 Greatness - Roles biased toward Day 365 greatness often focus on building the process, designing the tools, and synthesizing information from multiple sources. These roles focus on having an impact greater than themself in an organization. They can be more difficult to train and enable due to the complexities of the business and organization. However, hiring the right fit to manage the inflow of information and target their effort for maximum impact will amplify an organization.

Impact is often a function of the type of role being hired for. Some roles are more appropriate for data 1 effectiveness expectations, while others introduce complexity and expectations that demand an enablement and ramp plan for day 365 greatness;

• Day 1 Effectiveness is a reasonable expectation when hiring administrative roles or highly process execution-centric roles.
• Day 365 Greatness should be the objective for technical or creative jobs or those within highly complex organizations. These hires are people and roles that make an impact greater than themself.

I can’t tell you which is right for hiring in your organization or which expectation to set for the different roles you are hiring for. When you have immediate capacity needs, the organization will naturally push you toward hiring for day 1 effectiveness. When you are free to think strategically about hiring for growth, you can plan time investment and training to target a plan for day 365 greatness. Make the right decision for your organization, accounting for your urgency and ability to enable new team members.