In a webinar hosted by The HR World and sponsored by Morgan McKinley Talent Solutions, Niamh McCarthy, Client Services Managing Director for EMEA, Morgan McKinley Talent Solutions; Justine Friedmann, People & Culture Director, IFX Payments and Ed Gairdner, Chief of Staff, iplicit gave their insight on the challenges and solutions to achieving a smooth hiring process that benefits both employers and candidate alike.
The discussion was wide-ranging and full of useful, practical insights. Here we pick up on a couple of extra questions with the panel:
Q: What is the balance between speed to hire and ensuring cultural fit – especially if you really need those people?
Niamh McCarthy: I find balance is achieved by taking a partnership, data-driven and talent advisory approach in guiding the hiring managers toward better long-term outcomes, rather than just rapid fulfilment. We counsel our clients to define a ‘quality hire’ jointly with the Hiring Manager before the search begins. This moves TA from simply providing a service to being a strategic partner accountable for the outcome.
Justine Friedmann: To balance both speed and culture fit, I would clearly define the key cultural attributes that are non-negotiable for success within your team, and design a process that is quick yet is still able to assess the most important criteria. The ability to clearly articulate the culture expectations will be helpful to ensure these can be communicated to the candidates during the process. A wrong hire can be difficult, time consuming and sometimes costly to manage so it’s important to strike the right balance. Ultimately, it is all about assessing the risks, and being comfortable with these.
Ed Gairdner: Cultural fit is absolutely non-negotiable for us, especially as a remote-first company. We need people who are not only excellent at their job but who also demonstrate the self-motivation and behaviours that align with our values and way of working.
The pressure to hire quickly is always there – particularly when you’re scaling at pace – but we’ve learned that hiring fast at the expense of cultural fit creates far bigger problems down the line. A bad hire doesn’t just underperform; they can impact team morale, drain management time, and ultimately cost far more than leaving a role open for a few extra weeks.
Our approach is to be disciplined about the process while still moving efficiently. Having our CEO involved in first-round interviews – regardless of role – ensures we’re assessing cultural fit from the outset, not as an afterthought. And because our agency partners deeply understand our culture after growing with us from 30 to 190 people, they’re pre-filtering for fit before candidates even reach us.
So yes, speed matters – but not at the cost of getting the right person. We’d rather wait and get it right than rush and regret it.
Q: Some hiring managers can want to go with their ‘gut instinct’ on a candidate rather than following set procedures – how do you allow for personal preference or the set ideas of a hiring manager especially if it might go against the ‘official line’?
Niamh McCarthy: This speaks directly to the need for TA to evolve from a transactional role to a true strategic partner who influences outcomes. When Hiring Managers are experts in their specialism but fall short in engaging candidates at interview, that’s precisely where we step in. We support this partnership by providing the necessary structure and tools that professionalise the process whether that’s hiring manager interview training, interview guides, supporting interviews, ultimately, the goal is to shift the dynamic from TA serving the HM to TA coaching the HM.
Ed Gairdner: Transparency and honest debate are vital ingredients in our hiring process – and we actively encourage them. Gut instinct absolutely has a place, but it shouldn’t operate in isolation.
Because our hiring involves multiple touchpoints – from agency partners who’ve been embedded with us since we were 30 people, through to our CEO who interviews for most roles – we create natural checkpoints for discussion and challenge. When a Hiring Manager has a strong instinct about a candidate, we don’t dismiss it; we explore it. What are they seeing? What’s driving that feeling? Does it align with what others observed?
This collaborative approach means gut instinct gets tested and validated rather than overruled or blindly followed. Sometimes a Hiring Manager spots something others missed – that’s valuable. Other times, what feels like instinct is actually unconscious bias or a sense of urgency to fill a gap quickly – and having multiple perspectives helps surface (and avoid) that.
Ultimately, cultural fit is so critical to us that we’ve built in safeguards – but we’ve also built in space for debate. The goal isn’t rigid adherence to process for process’s sake; it’s making sure we’re all aligned on bringing in people who’ll thrive here and strengthen the team.
Justine Friedmann: The manager’s position would need to be discussed with them to ensure that it does have sound and objective basis rather than be based on bias or subjective views.
Training managers on best hiring practices and unconscious bias will help ensure that the benefits of a good process (both for the business and the candidate) and the potential risks of deviating from them are understood.
In terms of process, these should be able to be adapted in certain circumstances but I would recommend an interview with another manager so that the business can be satisfied that an assessment has taken place but also make sure that the candidate receives the experience and opportunity to be confident in their decision making.
