Companies have three objectives when hiring: quality, cost, and speed. They want great people, at the right price, and they want them now. The problem is most companies are forced to lower their bar for quality, pay outrageous salaries, or compromise on neither – which means hiring very slowly.
I call this state of compromise The Hiring Trap.
Conventional wisdom says culture, compensation, and benefits will attract more talent. But no company has ever gone from talent scarcity to talent abundance by rolling out a new mission statement, “20% time” policies, or in-office massages.
Companies that escaped The Hiring Trap didn’t follow conventional wisdom. They didn’t look to experts. They did something else entirely, something counterintuitive.