Latest / Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions / How a Hiring Freeze Forced Us to Hire Better
Transcript
- Lucas: Alright, I want to start with something that sounds terrible but might actually be a gift in disguise: a hiring freeze. Luna: A hiring freeze? That's the thing where you just... stop hiring, right? Feels like a panic move. Lucas: Exactly. And most of the time it is. But there's a story from a mid-size B2B SaaS company—let's call them CloudNova—that turned a six-month freeze into a fundamental improvement in how they hire. Luna: Okay, I'm skeptical. How does not hiring make you better at hiring? Lucas: Great question. So CloudNova had been growing like crazy—doubling headcount every 18 months. But their one-year retention rate was hovering around 55 percent. Half their new hires were gone within a year. Luna: Ouch. That's a lot of wasted recruiting cost and ramp-up time. Lucas: Right. So the CFO basically said, 'We are bleeding cash on bad hires. No new requisitions for six months. Figure out what's broken.' And the talent team—they didn't just twiddle their thumbs. They did a deep autopsy on every hire that had left within a year. Luna: What did they find? Lucas: Three big patterns. First, hiring managers were rushing to fill seats—average time to hire was 22 days, which is crazy fast for a senior role. Second, interviews were completely unstructured—different questions every time, no scoring rubric. Third, there was no cross-functional input; it was usually one manager deciding alone. Luna: So basically, they were hiring fast, inconsistent, and in a silo. Recipe for disaster. Lucas: Exactly. So during the freeze, they built a structured hiring scorecard. Every role got a one-page rubric with three to five competencies, each with a clear definition and a behavioral anchor. Interviewers had to score candidates on a scale of one to five, and they had to provide evidence for their score. Luna: That's a lot more work than just 'Do you like this person?' Lucas: It is. And they also mandated that every final-round candidate meet with at least two people from other teams—not just the hiring manager. The idea was to get a 360-degree view. They even trained interviewers on bias awareness and how to ask consistent questions. Luna: And all this happened during the freeze? So when the freeze lifted, they had a whole new process ready. Lucas: Exactly. And the results were striking. In the first six months after the freeze, they hired 40 percent fewer people than they had in the same period the year before. But their one-year retention rate jumped to 90 percent. Luna: So they hired fewer people but kept almost all of them. That's a huge efficiency gain. Lucas: Huge. And the cost savings were massive. Recruiting costs dropped because they were making fewer offers and getting fewer declines. Onboarding costs dropped because fewer new hires needed to be replaced. And team productivity went up because they weren't constantly ramping up new people. Luna: But I imagine telling hiring managers 'You can't hire anyone for six months' must have been brutal. How did they keep teams from burning out? Lucas: That's the hard part. CloudNova's CEO was very transparent about why the freeze was happening—he said, 'We are not cutting costs, we are fixing our engine.' They redistributed work where possible, used contractors for temporary gaps, and made sure recognition and promotions still happened. They also empowered managers to say 'no' to low-priority projects. Luna: So the freeze wasn't just about stopping hiring—it was about rethinking what work actually needed to be done. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the lesson I want to hammer home: a freeze can be a forcing function for clarity. When you can't just hire another body, you have to decide what's truly important. And you have to fix the process so that when you do hire, you hire the right person. Luna: I love that. And honestly, if this conversation has moved your work forward in some small way, maybe it was worth a coffee. You can find that link at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, just a little way to keep these conversations ad-free. Lucas: Yeah, we really appreciate that. And it's exactly that kind of support that lets us keep digging into stories like CloudNova's. So back to the freeze—one thing I want to emphasize is that they didn't just stop hiring. They used the time to build a better hiring machine. Luna: So what's the one thing a team could do right now, even without a freeze, to borrow from CloudNova's playbook? Lucas: I'd say the single highest-leverage move is to create a structured scorecard for your next critical hire. Even if you're the only interviewer, write down what good looks like. Define the competencies. Then score each candidate against that rubric before you even check their resume again. Luna: That forces you to be objective rather than just going with your gut. Lucas: Exactly. And the second move is to add one cross-functional interviewer to every process. Just one person from a different team who has no stake in filling the seat. They'll ask questions the hiring manager never thinks of. Luna: That's a great low-cost change. I also think the transparency piece is huge. If you're going to slow down hiring, explain why. People can handle a freeze if they trust the reasoning. Lucas: Yeah, CloudNova's CEO held a company-wide town hall and shared the retention data. He said, 'We are losing one out of every two people we hire. That's not fair to you, and it's not fair to them. We're going to fix it.' That honesty built trust. Luna: And when they did start hiring again, I bet candidates noticed a difference too. A more rigorous process can actually be a selling point—it signals that the company takes hiring seriously. Lucas: Absolutely. Candidates who went through CloudNova's new process said they felt more respected because the questions were relevant and the interviewers were prepared. Some even mentioned it in their offer acceptance emails. Luna: So the freeze ended up being a branding win as well. Lucas: In a way, yes. And the final piece I want to highlight is that after the freeze, they didn't just return to the old volume. They kept hiring intentionally. They set a 'quality gate'—every offer had to be approved by a panel that included someone from the talent team, not just the hiring manager. Luna: So they institutionalized the slowness. That's smart. Lucas: Exactly. The freeze was the catalyst, but the lasting change was a culture of deliberate hiring. And that's something any team can adopt, regardless of budget or growth stage. Luna: Alright, I'm convinced. Next time I hear about a hiring freeze, I'll think of it as an opportunity rather than a crisis. Lucas: That's the takeaway. And if you're in a position to influence hiring at your company, maybe the question isn't 'How do we hire faster?' but 'How do we hire better?' Sometimes the answer is to pause and rebuild. Luna: Well said. That's all for this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo. We'll be back next week with another story from the front lines of talent.