In Episode 14, I talk to Lauren Bell director of a company called “Hired in 7 Days”  where she is turning the hiring process upside down and using a unique game, changing obstacle based hiring strategy .  As a fellow juggler, she is also currently working on her Master’s of Educational Policy specializing in Adult Community and Higher Education at the University of Alberta.

She believes that life should be a balance of work, family, personal self development and political activism. And she works hard to create that kind of environment for herself and her staff.

I heard about this process while listening to the companies Podcast “Hired in 7 Days” and wanted to have Lauren on the show to talk more about it.

Lauren never actually saw herself working in HR, she admits that at the time she was hired for a different job with the parent company “I Love Mortgage Brokering” she was not a great candidate in the traditional sense. When she first applied was surprised to get an interview and be hired. She had a weak resume with a number of short terms jobs on it but she soon found she was naturally skilled at designing and refining the hiring and she enjoys being challenged in her role.

“Hired in the 7 Days” grew from a need that clients had, and like all great ideas, it evolved organically.  While coaching mortgage agents on how to grow their business, Lauren and her mentor, Scott Peckford, found that hiring a good assistant was a major obstacle for many of their clients.  In trying to help clients by offering to hire an assistant for them, they came up with a highly successful and adaptable process to quickly narrow a large applicant’s field into a small number of highly qualified candidates.

I found it interesting that they don’t even look at resumes until near the very end of the process. Instead, they focus on narrowing down the field quickly with carefully designed obstacles to reveal applicants’ skills and strengths without the inherent bias that comes from basing decisions on resumes. 

Lauren saves her clients time and money but doing the leg work for them. She starts with a fact-finding consultation to discover client needs and then tailors a hiring process with obstacles that reveal applicant’s strengths and remove poorly qualified applicants from the process. From there she compiles a complete application package complete with videos and suggested questions for employers to conduct the final interviews themselves.

Lauren talks about her favourite parts of the job and also the pain points that occasionally arise and how she handles those.  We discuss the cost benefit of spending hours doing your own hiring vs letting someone else do the time-consuming part for you and the time that frees up to work on other parts of your business.  In addition to providing a full start to finish hiring process they also offer workshops for those that would like to learn to do their own hiring.   

 You can find more info at :

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-bell-75a933187/?originalSubdomain=ca

Hiring Service | Hired in 7 Dayshttps://www.hiredin7days.com/podcast