Move fast - Make decisions quickly. Get offers into candidate hands as soon as you can. If you don’t hire them now, your competition will.

Don’t be messy and scare the candidate -Be sure you don’t scare the candidate off with a messy interview process. Don’t miss meetings, cancel interviews at the last minute, etc.

Have an efficient interview process –Don’t create hurdles and barriers by having a long, complicated interview process. Meeting 20 people, taking 5 tests and coming back to the building three times will cause you to miss out on talented candidates. Create a more streamlined process for all involved.

Don’t make hiring decisions by committee – Stop waiting for everyone on the team to love the candidate. If everyone had the talent to select great candidates, they’d be the hiring manager, not a team member. In addition, there’s lots of human nature, ego and competition factors that come into play. Pro tip – Don’t make candidates interview with a potential peer or team member before the hiring manager. Bad idea for a host of reasons.

Rank soft skills over technical –Rank personality, people skills and culture fit higher than specific experience or skill set. It will benefit your team better in the long run.

Stop looking for “Perfect” – The perfect resume or LinkedIn profile doesn’t always equal the best employee. Look at, consider and talk to candidates that are a close match, but not perfect on paper. Then see if the soft-skills warrant making them an offer.

Open the job up for remote – Allow the position to work remotely if possible. Open up your options for considering talent all across the planet instead of limiting your pool to a small geographic area.

Pay at least market rate (and stop thinking you’re special) – If cash flow allows it, pay people at least the average salary for the position. Stop thinking that your company is special enough and “cool” enough to underpay candidates what they’re worth.

Don’t haggle – Stop haggling and negotiating over dollars that don’t really matter. If a candidate you love wants $110k and you were budgeted at only $100k, just give them the extra money. At that salary and that range, it doesn’t really matter. A great candidate will make up the difference with those small dollars. Missing out on good talent over a few thousand dollars is silly.

At least speak to them – If you’ve hired a recruiter to source talent, when they present someone, at least take a few minutes to chat with the candidate. Don’t glance at the resume or the LinkedIn and quickly pass. If a good recruiter has recommended a candidate, there’s more to it than what you’re seeing on the candidate’s LinkedIn profile.