I’ve spent much of 2022 in hiring mode: adding designers, researchers, product managers, and leaders to my team and my company. So far this year, I’ve interviewed well over 200 candidates, from those just about to graduate from college for their first entry-level role to highly-experienced leaders for director and Vice President roles.

When I’m the hiring manager, or the executive to whom the hiring manager reports, I do the following to improve the success of my hiring efforts.

First of all, I do most of the outreach to the most interesting candidates personally. Candidates almost always like talking to the actual leader of the team, not a recruiter.

For high-impact roles, I spend a lot of time on sourcing good candidates. I search for potential candidates, and share the results of those searches (both the positive and the negative) with my recruiter so that they can learn what I’m lookin for. I craft personalized messages, and I follow up on the messages that I send.

When I’m not actively hiring, I still spend time in places where the candidates I most want for my roles are the most likely to hang out so that folks know me and are more likely to respond when I am hiring later. Having a good reputation as a leader who is engaged and thoughtful means that candidates who aren’t actively looking are more likely to respond to me.

I make sure that I know what differentiates working for me, my team, and my company different than other companies. I share that with candidates so that they can better understand why they should choose working for me, my team, and my company over their other potential roles. I determine what matters to the candidate I’m speaking to, and talk up the points where working for me is most differentiated on those points from my competition.

I give feedback to high-potential candidates. Candidates often complain that they cannot get feedback during the interview process, so providing meaningful feedback is a further differentiator. As I strongly believe in giving actionable and timely feedback, it’s a way to show candidates how I live my beliefs. Seeing how candidates respond to feedback gives me additional data to use in my hiring decision.

Hiring is one of the most important things that I do as a leader. Getting it right is important to me.