Write down your first impressions

We’re going through a series of key hires in the studio to help us grow to the next stage of our journey.

We’ve hired slowly and intentionally over the 12 years. Going from 6, to 9, to 12, and now to 15.

This means that we haven’t had a huge amount of reps in interviewing and hiring. It took us 4-5 years to identify what our values were as a team and to hire people that lifted and changed the culture in positive ways.

We want to hire with inclusivity in mind, whatever someone’s background and experience may be.

Hire with your Head (for me, it was the 4th Edition of the book), is a great book to help work towards a fair process that aims to remove as much bias, or at least be able to reflect on bias when it happens, to help build your team.

A key takeaway is the idea of writing down your first impressions of a candidate. It’s an easy first step, and it helps you understand your initial judgements of people, and on reflection, if they turn out to be justified, or, after digging a little deeper, whether they were unjust with a demonstration of your bias slipping through.

To do this, write down a few key takeaways you have in the opening minutes of when you meet the candidate. After a serious of interviews, reflect on those first impressions. See if your initial judgements were true, do any of them still hold up?

This tool will help you think and articulate your reasons for liking/disliking a candidate, with the ultimate goal of bringing a diversity of minds to the team as you continue your journey together.