Open Interviewing Policy
I’ve been interviewing a lot of people in the past few weeks and I’ve been wondering how they, you know, get 4 hours off in the middle of the work day to interview. Fake doctor’s appointment? Call in sick? No one is paying attention to their office hours? WFH that becomes undocumented PTO? My guess is its not on the record…they aren’t telling their bosses that they are going on interviews. There’s some level of sneaking around.
Why?
Seems to me that the interviewing taboo is in no one’s best interest–not the employee, not the employer. If you are the kind of employer/manager that tries to retain employees by keeping them ignorant of other opportunities, good luck pulling that off in Silicon Valley…you’re just going to annoy your top talent and be left with, what’s left. Most of the talented people I know interview a couple times a year even when they aren’t interested in making a move–they consider it basic career hygiene to stay in touch with what the market is like, it also helps them figure out what they want (from their next career move).
I’m going to pitch my boss on an open interview policy for our company. I send him a crazy idea like this once a quarter or so. :) Everyone is expected to interview at least twice a year. You put it on your calendar and call it what it is. And to prove we’re serious, you get, say, 1% of your annual salary as a bonus for each set of interviews taken to 2nd round or later each year, 2 max.
Pros:
- Mixbook is a great place to work, the people are great, the work environment is awesome, I believe that will be even more apparent to employees that look around, and morale will benefit from folks seeing that for themselves.
- Interviews become an opportunity to improve the employee+manager relationship. Instead of sneaking around we can talk about the interviews. How did it go? Oh, you like the idea of a role doing X? I didn’t know that, we need that too, would you like a chance to do that here? They pay 20% more? I didn’t know that was market, let’s make an adjustment!
- We are less likely to retain people that aren’t a good fit. Hey, it happens, not every employee and every company stay in perfect alignment forever. Parting ways on mutually agreeable terms seems far superior to the alternatives.
- Higher morale. I mean, wouldn’t you rather work at a place where you can be open about your career? Would you give that up lightly?
Cons:
Our employees might interview more than they would otherwise (sort of the point). And that may lead to higher churn. My bet is if churn goes up at all, it would be ‘good’ churn, where we were growing apart and the right thing to do for both parties was to move on.