Recruiting for year one

The first big takeaway I gleaned from The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired by Lou Adler was the difference between hiring for day one versus hiring for year one.

Day-one concerns are salary, benefits, office, laptop. Important, but in many ways superficial.

Year-one concerns are more substantive: What will I have accomplished over the next 12 months? How will I grow in my profession? How do I move up within this organization?

Changing to a year-one mindset was transformative for me, though I noticed that recruiting tools are almost exclusively oriented toward day-one goals. As I designed Redflannel, I asked myself: how can I create an experience that supports recruiting but starts a long-term process within my team that brings value for years beyond?

A Redflannel-driven recruiting experience should begin with an immediate evaluation—tell me how you rate your current skill levels and highlight the skills you want to work on in the next year. This evaluation makes resume and portfolio review more concrete: do I see those skills reflected in the work? The subsequent interview can get into deeper subjects more quickly: “I see you’re strong in visual design skills, but you don’t have much experience managing your own projects. Is that a skill you’re ready to build?”

With these pieces in place early, the transition onto to the team can be smoother, with a clear professional development plan to guide your new hire’s path and annual re-assessments to track growth.