Since our founding as a company in 2004, the cultural fit of our prospective employees has always been one of the key criteria on which we base our hiring decisions. We now want to look beyond just “fitting our culture” and “good enough.” Now we are raising the bar.
But recruiting talented and experienced people is easier said than done. That’s why in January 2023, we adopted a Bar Raiser approach to how we recruit staff.
follow the highest standards
“At Hostinger, we do more than just fill seats with warm bodies. For Hostinger’s success, we aim to hire the best people. We pride ourselves on having high standards. and we are raising the bar even higher when it comes to hiring the right talent,” explains Benita Narkevičiuta, Head of Talent Acquisition at Hostinger.
Our 10 principles state that we always strive for high standards. These principles guide everything we do. When it comes to recruiting, we’re looking for people who can approach goals from new angles and bring new expertise to drive our business and team forward.
When considering potential Hostinger employees, we ask:
- Are you striving to find the best solution?
- Do you lead by example?
- Are you putting your customers first?
- Do you take responsibility for your work?
The Bar Raiser process is designed to answer such questions within the interview loop.
Our goal is to raise the bar – we want to hire people who are 50% better than our current team. We are trying to adopt the peak of culture from different points of view.
- They strive to build world-class solutions and care about their customers.
- They exemplify our principles and lead by example.
- They bring capabilities and industry knowledge to Hostinger that will help us move forward and achieve future success.
This can be a long process, but as each person you hire raises the bar, your team will gradually grow stronger and produce stronger and stronger results. We know from our own research that high-performing people thrive in high-performing teams. Additionally, if your team is not performing to its potential, you may lose motivation.
“Some say that multiple interview steps are expensive. I believe that hiring the wrong person who leaves within six months is much more costly,” says Benita Narkeviciute. .
“When I knew I needed to hire the best possible person, I was scared and thought, “What if that person was much better than me?” It took me a few years to really accept this. . I saw someone who was much better than me in some dimension and how that changed things and entire organizational classes, and I thought there was no other way to do this.” Hostinger’s Best says Giedrius, head of product. Zakaitis.
As Giedrius explains, Hostinger’s goal is to raise standards even higher, primarily in several aspects, but not overall. We usually ask if we should hire this person, what level of superstar can this person be?
Amazon’s Bar Raising: The Beginnings
Back in 1999, at a time of explosive business growth, Amazon managers were hiring without a structured interview process or consistent criteria to anchor their approach and hiring decisions. Ta.
Bryce Hanson, co-founder and senior consultant at Culture Compass and an experienced global business leader with nearly 20 years of experience leading successful business and human resources teams at Amazon, says that hiring managers and interview teams He explains that he was easily guided by his personal biases. Groupthink, subjective interview feedback, and the urgency to fill seats.
“The technology team realized that Amazon’s talent bar was actually lowering. That’s why our technical and recruiting leadership teams have put together reproducible, scalable, and easily teachable suggestions to facilitate a consistent interviewing and hiring process. The program used a common scoring system for defined and assigned competencies and required each hire to outperform at least 50% of the existing team in some specific way. An objective third party, known as a Bar Raiser, facilitates the process end-to-end and helps drive consensus on hiring decisions and raise the company’s talent and performance standards. ”
The name Bar Raiser applies to both the process and the group of people (Bar Raiser) who make it happen. This process works by having trained bar raisers involved in the process, but not directly with the recruitment or hiring team. As a result, Bar Raiser is free from any sense of urgency or unconscious bias that can lead to poor hiring decisions.
Bryce said the new interview and hiring process added objective tension to hiring, which, combined with the company’s overall philosophy, promoted and reinforced high hiring standards. As proof of the success of that approach, more than 20 years later, Bar Raiser remains a key component of Amazon’s recruiting efforts.
Implementing Bar Raiser in Hostinger
Bar Raiser is a trained interviewer in our recruitment process, ensuring that your hiring decision has the best long-term potential. Therefore, Hostinger has some criteria for this person.
- You will be a true ambassador of Hostinger’s principles and demonstrate your ability to evaluate talent against our principles.
- Must be nominated by team leader/coworker.
- Must be an experienced interviewer and have completed Bar Raiser training.
- You must have strong analytical skills, an objective mindset, and be passionate about the recruitment process.
“As an ambitious global company, we are always open to receiving inspiration and guidance from the world around us, especially from the world’s best companies. We adopt these tools and see them implemented in other companies. We try it out just as we do, and then make our own adjustments to get the best results,” explains Giedrius Zakaitis.
One example is the implementation of the Bar Raiser principle.
At first, we started with the same model as Amazon. Then, in mid-2023, we worked with Bryce Hanson to review and refine our unique process, leading to Bar Raiser 2.0.
As a result, we expanded the role of Bar Raiser. This now includes facilitating interview debriefing, which previously was driven by either the hiring manager or recruiter. The problem was that hiring managers and recruiters were not always objective due to pressure to hire quickly and meet sourcing and hiring performance goals.
“Another important change is the focus on behavioral interview questions specifically related to Hostinger Principles. This allows the interview team to ask questions about their behaviors, actions, and past performance as they relate to Hostinger Principles. An important aspect of this process is the concept of maintaining the confidentiality of “votes” prior to debriefing, as this creates a potential risk of groupthink. This can lead to poor hiring decisions based on personal bias and the very human desire for consensus and harmony. Now, rather than having veto power in the final interview, BarRaisers guides, advises, provides feedback and supports both recruiters and hiring managers through every step of the interview process.” Bryce Hanson says Mr.
Benita explains her role:
- Hiring managers own the hiring process and are ultimately the decision makers.
- Recruiters use their day-to-day expertise to coordinate the entire hiring process.
- Bar raisers provide objective insight because they feel no urgency to play the role.
Giedrius experienced this firsthand. “As a hiring manager, asking why helps cover blind spots and raises the bar. If there’s one thing he’s been most happy with recently implemented, it’s Bar Raiser.”
We know that all candidates value Hostinger as much as we value our candidates. Our hope is that BarRaiser’s presence will improve the interview experience for candidates, demonstrate how seriously we take each role, and how much we invest in recruiting and developing the best talent. is to show.
Misconceptions about the bar raiser process
Blythe, who has participated in well over 1,000 interviews on Amazon and has worked with Bar Raiser over the past 20 years, has identified two main misconceptions about the process.
Standard raisers regularly abuse their power by vetoing hiring decisions.
At Hostinger, the hiring manager is the final decision maker with support from Bar Raiser and recruiters. Bar raisers can veto a recruiter’s decision if they feel it is not in the best interest of the company, but this rarely happens. Simply put, the veto is the exception, not the rule.
The bar-raising interview is the most difficult part for candidates.
Candidates do not need to make any additional preparation for the Bar Raiser interview. Just have a quick conversation about your values, principles, and beliefs. Additionally, bar raisers are excellent interviewers who have a deep understanding of the culture and are trained for such interviews.
Measuring bar height
Since implementing the Bar Raiser process at Hostinger, we have hired 136 people as of this writing.
So far, only 9% had been working for less than six months. We will continue to monitor this number and aim for 0%. At this time, we are implementing peak performance metrics and culture peak initiatives to measure the performance of Bar Raiser hires. These shine a light on people who have delivered results and demonstrated outstanding behavior across one or more of our 10 principles.
“There is still much work to be done,” Benita insists. “We work with bar raisers and recruiters because we believe there is tremendous potential to strengthen interviewing skills, improve the overall understanding of recruitment, and enrich the candidate experience. We are in a good place, but we could be in an even better place. Fortunately, we know what we need to do to get there. ”
We want everyone who joins Hostinger to feel proud and motivated to raise the bar even higher.