I’m excited to welcome my friend and former colleague, Rick Keller, to co-author this post with me. Rick is an experienced IT leader with a wealth of knowledge and an exceptional track record in leading complex technology projects. He currently serves as the Vice President and CIO Advisory at Bedroc, an IT resource provider based here in Franklin, TN.
When companies need to expand rapidly, especially for large-scale projects, hiring can feel like an overwhelming challenge. Deadlines loom, expectations run high, and the pressure to find not just bodies, but qualified people, can be daunting. According to a recent study, 70% of companies report that hiring fast while maintaining quality candidates is a top concern in today’s labor market. The difficulty is compounded when you’re trying to hire for specialized roles, where competition is fierce and the talent pool is already shallow.
So, how do you build a process that not only allows for fast hiring but ensures you’re bringing on people who will stay and contribute to your organization’s long-term success?
That’s what we had to figure out—and in this article, we’ll walk you through the strategies we developed and the lessons we learned while hiring nearly 200 skilled professionals for a massive software implementation project.
The Story of Our Fast-Hiring Process
In 2016, Rick and I—two leaders at a large for-profit health services company—were tasked with a major challenge. Our company was embarking on a multi-million-dollar software implementation project, merging all of our electronic health records (EHR) into Epic, a single-source solution. The transition required that we hire nearly 200 team members within a year. As a leader in Talent Acquisition, I (Kent) oversaw recruiting while Rick, as head of the IT department, was responsible for making the final call on hiring candidates.
The stakes were high. We had aggressive hiring deadlines and critical implementation milestones to meet, and we knew that every delay in hiring would push back our overall timeline. Yet, in the end, we managed to not only meet our deadlines but also save over 50% of what a typical implementation would have cost, by managing the process internally rather than relying on outside consulting services. We also saved nearly $1 million in staffing costs by using our team to hire full-time employees instead of hiring contractors or paying recruiting firms.
Even better, our IT team received recognition from Epic for the quality and efficiency of the implementation. But achieving this wasn’t easy—it took a great deal of proactive problem-solving, creative thinking, and constant collaboration.
What We Learned About Rapid, Effective Hiring
From this experience, we learned a number of valuable lessons about how to build a fast, efficient hiring process that still delivers high-quality talent. Here are some of the key takeaways that we hope can help other organizations facing similar challenges:
1. Clear the Path: Anticipate and Remove Roadblocks Early to Accelerate Hiring.
One of the first steps we took was to anticipate potential roadblocks and address them before they became an issue. When hiring at scale and speed, any delay or misstep can snowball into a major problem. This means you need to think creatively, leveraging every available resource and looking at ways to streamline the process.
For instance, one of the challenges we faced was the sheer volume of hiring decisions we needed to make. To combat this, I asked Rick to identify five trusted people in his department who could be empowered to make hiring decisions. This allowed us to scale up our decision-making capacity and keep things moving quickly. It also freed Rick up to focus on the bigger picture, while ensuring that we had enough eyes on each candidate to maintain quality control.
2. Be Specific, but Flexible: Clarify Role Requirements and Broaden Your Search for Ideal Candidates
When you’re trying to hire fast, the temptation is to focus on the most experienced candidates with the exact skills you need. But in reality, this can slow you down. The key is to clearly define the base-level requirements for each role, while also being open to different kinds of candidates who can meet those requirements with some training or support.
For our project, we quickly realized that finding “unicorns” with the perfect skill set would be too time-consuming. So instead, we established three categories of candidates: recent college grads, candidates with prior applications or technology experience, and senior-level team members with the necessary skills and leadership abilities. This approach allowed us to move faster and broaden our talent pool. Training new grads and focusing on core competencies rather than searching for “perfect” candidates was one of the most critical factors in our success.
3. Assess Aptitude & Attitude: Use a Streamlined Process to Find the Right Fit
In our case, every candidate had to pass an assessment that showed they could learn new technology—specifically Epic. But hiring for aptitude alone wasn’t enough. We also needed to assess whether a candidate would be a good fit for our culture and team dynamics.
To do this efficiently, we developed a panel interview process that allowed us to assess both skills and cultural fit in a single day. Our panels included subject matter experts who could evaluate technical abilities, as well as HR and business operations leaders who could assess broader fit and potential for long-term success. This comprehensive approach helped us not only fill the roles but ensure that the people we hired would thrive in them, ultimately increasing retention and performance. Some of our best hires were candidates who might not have looked like the obvious choice based on technical aptitude alone, but who excelled because of their adaptability and team fit.
4. Rethink Orientation: Align Onboarding with Your Rapid Hiring Goals
Hiring a significant number of people quickly will inevitably put pressure on your onboarding process. To ensure that our new hires could hit the ground running, we had to completely rethink our orientation schedule. Instead of the typical monthly onboarding sessions, we moved to a more frequent schedule that allowed new hires to start sooner. This required close coordination between HR and IT, but it was critical to keeping the project on track.
By adjusting our onboarding process to fit the needs of the project, we were able to integrate new team members more quickly and avoid delays that could have thrown off our timeline.
The Bottom Line: Fast, Efficient Hiring is Possible
In the end, the success of our fast-hiring process came down to a few key factors: proactive problem-solving, clear communication, and collaboration across departments. By anticipating challenges and working together to overcome them, we were able to meet our aggressive hiring deadlines and achieve a successful software implementation—all while saving time and money.
If there’s one takeaway we hope readers get from this experience, it’s that even when you’re under intense pressure, taking the time to rethink your processes and collaborate creatively can lead to extraordinary results. Fast doesn’t have to mean frantic, and effective doesn’t have to mean expensive—with the right approach, you can have both.
By Kent Wilson & Rick Keller