The Career Game Loop

22Hiring Career Loopers

22.1 In Good Company

It took about three and a half centuries for the word company to become synonymous with business institution. The word has its roots in 12th-century Old French, where compagnie meant something like “friendship and society.” This, in turn, was derived from the Latin roots com and panis, which combined to suggest “people who eat bread together.”¹

In the near millennium since humanity first spoke of creating a company, I worry that many of us have forgotten these roots. A company's roots are in its society. In its people. Without those people, a company's just a mission statement. A bank statement. An empty building. It's people who make it run, who give it value. It's people who fill buildings, fill bank accounts, and put missions into action.

Leading a company requires that we think critically about our people. And that thinking begins with hiring. Who do we want on our team? Who do we want to break bread with? And can we look past the keywords and stats and biases to see the real people who want to join us?

Today, many employers, recruiters, and hiring managers continue to hire the same way that folks hired generations ago. In the rush to fill vacancies, these decision-makers fall back on methods that haven't evolved to account for contemporary business challenges or contemporary applicant pools.

And when employers like these don't keep up, they risk losing out. In particular, employers who don't modernize and adapt will end up looking ...