if I could rebuild our hiring process from scratch, I'd change these 4 things first

I feel that the current hiring system is redundant and needs an overhaul.

We have been doing the same thing over and over again for the past decade or more. We publish a JD on a portal, they find candidates, go through screening rounds, and then send an offer document.

A step change here or there for some of the industries.

A couple of things that I feel we could fix are:

1. Stop leading with resumes.  Resumes are crafted with precision because there is ample guidance on how to draft an effective resume, on the internet. I feel it will be replaced by a skills-based assessment in which candidates must demonstrate their skills before the first round.

2. Define roles by outcomes, not requirements.

Previously, the JDs used to be a senior customer success manager with 5 years of work experience worked on tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, etc. Slightly vague where a candidate didn't know what to actually expect when they started.  

In the future, I feel it will be more  outcome-driven: an example is shared below:

eg. Hiring a Senior Customer Success Manager to reduce churn in our top accounts, grow expansion revenue, and improve onboarding completion in the first 90 days. The role should be able to run difficult renewal calls, spot at-risk accounts early, and turn product feedback into action across sales and product.

This will ensure that the candidate knows exactly what's expected of them.

3. One structured screen before any interview.  

Currently, the flow is as follows: an HR person calls the candidate, asks a few qualifying questions, assesses their responses, and then sends them to the hiring manager. In the future, I feel this will be replaced by a problem-based video interview, taken before the HR calls, or maybe it will go to the hiring manager.

4. Track quality, not just speed.

Some of the companies I’ve spoken with track time-to-hire as a measure of success.  But they fail to  assess the candidate's performance 6 months or one year after they have joined the organisation. We are trying to incorporate processes that help us do this. It's quite tedious at this point. We'll share more details in a year.

What would you change first if you were rebuilding from zero?