The Hiring Audit

POINT 3: ARE YOU QUALIFYING CANDIDATES CONSISTENTLY?

Ask: does every candidate get screened against the same non-negotiables, in the same order, by the same standard, regardless of who happens to be reviewing them that day?

If different reviewers apply different bars, you're not filtering consistently, you're filtering randomly. FIX: use a single written screening question set (the Candidate Qualifier prompt works well here) and require every reviewer to use it, no exceptions for candidates who "seem obviously good."

POINT 4: IS YOUR FILTERING TOO TIGHT OR TOO LOOSE?

Ask: what percentage of sourced candidates make it to a first screen? Under 5% suggests the brief's non-negotiables are unrealistic for the market. Over 40% suggests you're not filtering at all and every screen is a fishing expedition.

FIX: if too tight, re-run the Cost-Per-Hire and Channel Picker exercises to check the range and channel are realistic. If too loose, tighten the non-negotiables list and re-screen the current pipeline against it.

POINT 5: IS THE INTERVIEW LOOP TESTING THE RIGHT THINGS?

Ask: does each interview stage test a distinct part of the scorecard, or do three interviewers all end up asking some version of "tell me about a time you led a team"?

FIX: map every stage against the scorecard categories before the loop runs. Any category tested twice and any category not tested at all is a structural gap, not a candidate problem.

POINT 6: IS THE PANEL SCORING CONSISTENTLY?

Ask: when two interviewers assess the same candidate on the same category, do their scores land within 1 point of each other, or are they routinely 3+ points apart?

FIX: a shared 1-5 rubric with a one-line description of what each score looks like (as in the 3 H's Interview Guide) closes most of this gap. If scores are still wildly inconsistent after that, the questions themselves are probably too open-ended.

POINT 7: IS THE DECISION GETTING MADE FAST ENOUGH?

Ask: how many days pass between the final interview and a hire/no-hire decision? Anything over 48 hours starts losing candidates to competing offers.

FIX: use the structured 20-minute debrief template. Silent scoring first, then discussion, then a decision that gets made in the room, not "let's regroup next week."

POINT 8: IS THE OFFER PROCESS BUILT TO CLOSE, OR JUST TO SEND?

Ask: does every offer start with a verbal call, or does the letter go out cold by email first?

FIX: always call before you send. The verbal offer script exists for exactly this reason: it de-risks the moment where most declines actually originate.

POINT 9: IS YOUR TIMELINE REALISTIC FOR THE ROLE?

Ask: does the role have a target close date with weekly checkpoints, or an open-ended "as soon as possible"?

FIX: run the 30-Day Hire Sprint. Vague urgency with no checkpoints is functionally the same as no urgency at all, from the candidate's side of the process.

POINT 10: ARE YOU SET UP FOR RETENTION, NOT JUST THE HIRE?

Ask: does every new hire get a structured 30-day plan with weekly checkpoints, or do they get a laptop and a Slack invite and figure it out?

FIX: run the 30-Day Onboarding Roadmap for every hire, with the early-warning checklist shared with the manager before day one. A hire that quits at month four after a costly search is the single most expensive failure mode in this entire process, and it's also the most preventable.

RESULT BUCKETS

Mostly GREEN: your process is fundamentally sound. Any slowness is likely candidate-market timing, not process failure. Keep the checkpoints running and don't over-correct on a single slow search.

Mostly AMBER: there's a specific, fixable bottleneck, usually the first point in the list where you scored a no. Fix that one point before touching anything downstream of it. Fixing point 7 (decision speed) does nothing if point 1 (the brief) is still unclear.

Mostly RED: stop the current search. Rebuild from the brief up before spending another pound on sourcing. A search built on a red-status foundation doesn't get better with more candidates, it just produces more wrong candidates faster.

WHEN TO FIX IT YOURSELF VS BRING SOMEONE IN

If the audit reveals one or two clear bottlenecks and you have the hours to fix them this week, fix them yourself using the tools referenced throughout this audit. If the audit reveals structural issues across most of the 10 points, or you know what to fix but genuinely don't have the hours in the week to fix it, that's the signal to bring someone in, not a failure on your part.