In a company of 10 to 250 people, hiring is a decision that matters. Recruitment specialists train for years to do it well, and there are methods, techniques and processes that help you hire better.
The preparation work behind a selection process and the hire that follows often gets skipped, pushed aside by the rush and the urgency of the need, especially in companies that still have no HR department.
Suddenly the vacancy turns into a genuine emergency and the process is split between the managing director, the head of the area and whoever posts the ad. We hire without ever having taken the time to sit down and think about which profile we really need, which tasks we are going to hand over to that person and what their objectives will be. We have used neither the right method nor the tools that make it easy and make it good.
Tools, methods, and a definition of what we want and what we expect from the new person. Without these, the outcome will be something subtler than a bad hire, and just as hard to manage in the medium term.
According to Synergie España, getting a hire wrong costs between 1.5 and 3 times the gross annual salary: more than 100,000 euros for a middle manager on 45,000. And ManpowerGroup puts the figure at 80 % of Spanish medium-sized companies and 79 % of small ones reporting difficulty filling vacancies, above large corporations. Precisely because finding talent costs so much, it is worth avoiding losing it to a process without method or tools, or to a poorly defined role.
1. Define the contribution before describing the candidate
I know, it feels like an uphill climb, and even so it is essential to prepare a proper job description and to have the internal conversation about what the person is going to do and what your objectives are in hiring them. If we write the profile as a simple sum of tasks, qualifications and desirable qualities, we will be looking for an abstraction on paper, the kind that leads straight to failure.
My advice: ask yourself one question. If twelve months from now this hire had been a success, what would have changed because of it? The answer comes down to four or five observable results, and only then do you work out what experience is needed to deliver them.
If a year from now this hire were an outright success, what would have changed in your company that is missing today?
Before you read on, if you want a picture of where your company stands today: the free HR Maturity assessment is 15 questions and 3 minutes, and it ends with the three priorities worth looking at first.
2. Set the salary band before starting the selection process
Pay is part of the design of the role, and our recommendation is to set it against three references: what the market pays, what people with comparable responsibilities earn inside the company, and what our P&L can afford.
Otherwise we run the risk of hiring above market or, far worse, of creating an internal inequity that will eventually come out, because these things always come out, and that will hand us another problem.
The regulatory direction is unambiguous. Directive (EU) 2023/970 gives candidates the right to know the initial pay or its range, in a way that allows an informed negotiation, and prohibits asking them about their pay history. The information may stay out of the advertisement, although it must be provided before the hire at a point where it is still useful for negotiating.
The transposition deadline expired on 7 June 2026. In Spain, the draft royal decree published on 3 August was still going through the process at the end of that month and only partially incorporates the Directive; it also leaves these pre-hire measures out for now. So they are best presented as voluntary anticipation, rather than as a general obligation already written into Spanish law. Adopting them lets you get ahead of where the regulation is heading, and it prevents selection processes that are doomed from the start by incompatible salary expectations.
Could you explain today, on objective criteria, why two people at the same level in your company are paid differently?
3. Choose the channels where you will look for the right candidate
Each channel does something different and has its limit. Referrals bring trust and speed, although they reproduce the networks you already have, so it is worth combining them with open channels. Job boards give volume with uneven fit. LinkedIn gives visibility. And direct search is essential when the right profile is working happily somewhere else.
Decide before you start where you are looking, who reviews the applications and how often. A good candidate is usually in several processes at once, and taking ten days to reply is rarely a good practice. A clear offer, a reply on time and a schedule that is kept say a great deal about how the company works, with no need for a corporate presentation.
How long does your company take from a good application arriving to someone picking up the phone?
4. Screen against written criteria and govern the use of AI
Screening rests on a maximum of five essential requirements. Essential means that, with that element missing, the person would take too long to perform in the role. Everything else is desirable or learnable.
The criteria are set before the first CV is opened and are applied equally to everyone. That forces you to separate evidence from familiarity: a candidate feeling recognisable usually means only that they resemble someone we already know. Watch out for the halo effect: having gone to the same school, for instance, creates familiarity, and familiarity holds no value as evidence.
If you want to use artificial intelligence in the process, go ahead, as long as it serves to sort, summarise and compare. The rest, the final decision, is yours to make: responsibility stays with the company even when the algorithm returns a score with two decimal places. On top of that, the EU AI Act classes systems that materially influence selection as high risk, as we explained in EU AI Act and HR: What Applies Now and What Moves to 2027. You should always be able to answer three questions: which tool you use, on what criteria it intervenes, and who reviews and corrects its output.
If a candidate asked you in writing why they were rejected, would you have the answer on file? Would it be a real, well-founded answer?
5. Interview to gather evidence, rather than to confirm impressions
The free-form interview produces pleasant conversations and decisions that are hard to compare. Each candidate answers different questions and, in the end, affinity carries the weight.
Structure leaves plenty of room for a natural conversation: the same core questions for everyone, concrete examples of past situations and a rating scale agreed in advance. Asking "how do you handle conflict?" invites people to describe an ideal version of themselves. Asking about a real conflict, what the person did and what they would do differently today shows judgement and learning. Each interviewer scores separately before hearing the others: when the most senior person speaks first, it is striking how quickly everyone else remembers the interview the same way they do.
Add a short sample of real work: a case, a proposal, an incident. Paid, if it demands substantial effort. It shows you how the person thinks once they stop talking about themselves.
Do your interviews resemble each other enough to compare two candidates?
6. Decide, close well and support the first ninety days
The process needs one person accountable for the decision. That person can listen to several others and, even so, diffuse consensus leaves the judgement orphaned: when everyone decides, it is hard to know afterwards what weighed and why.
The final comparison goes back to the starting point: what results the company needs, what evidence each application brings and what risks would have to be managed. Every application brings some. A mature decision separates the acceptable risks from those that compromise what the role has to achieve.
Closing the process well matters just as much: how I give feedback to the candidates who took part and were not chosen and, of course, how I prepare the arrival of the person selected. The offer sets out pay, variable, terms and start date, and anticipates the counter-offer from their current employer, which almost always comes. And the process ends when the person understands the business and starts contributing: for that they need a ninety-day plan covering what they should learn, who they should meet and what results are expected, plus check-ins at thirty, sixty and ninety days. Letting them land on their own measures their survival skills, rather than their autonomy.
Who sits down with the new person on their first day, and what have they prepared for them?
Method reduces error and prevents arbitrariness
No process guarantees a perfect hire. People change, roles evolve and some things only surface once you work together. Method serves to reduce avoidable errors, to make decisions explainable and to learn when the outcome drifts from what was expected.
Every company needs its own way of answering the six points covered here. Hiring is deciding, person by person, what company you are building.
How we do it
At DO'IN TALENT we treat selection as one piece of the organisational system and as one of the eight people areas we cover. We define the need, order the criteria, design the process, support the decision and prepare the onboarding. Then we leave the method in writing, so the company can use it on its own.
HR Maturity
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