What I Learned About Hiring from Watching Our Decorators

We’re in the middle of a house renovation. Dust sheets everywhere, tools on every surface, and that faint smell of paint that lingers for days.

Our decorators have been here all week, and what struck me most wasn’t how they paint — it was how much time they spend before they start painting.

They fill every crack, sand down each edge, prime the woodwork, and tape off corners that most people would ignore. It looks painstakingly slow. But when they finally pick up the roller, everything flows. The finish is perfect. The work feels quick, smooth, and deliberate.

It made me think about hiring.

Because in most businesses, recruitment feels like the opposite.

It drags.

Everyone’s busy, roles change mid-process, and interviews get delayed. Then, when the wrong person’s hired, the whole thing starts again.

The common cause?

A lack of preparation.

People rush to advertise the role without doing the groundwork — and end up spending twice as long trying to fix what could have been avoided. So time gets wasted reviewing the wrong CVs, interviewing unsuitable candidates, and going back to the start when it doesn’t work out.

Just like decorating, great hiring is 80% prep.

We get it — when there’s an open role, the instinct is to move fast and fill it just to ease the pressure on the team. But that rush often creates more delay, not less. When you invest that time at the start, everything afterwards runs faster and with less friction.

And this isn’t just observation — the research backs it up.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found that the most successful hires start with careful groundwork: defining the role, required skills, and success measures before going to market. They also note that poor preparation is one of the main causes of “delays, mismatches, and wasted effort later in the process.”

Similarly, Personio’s 2024 review found that companies using structured, pre-planned recruitment processes fill roles faster and keep people longer. They make a simple but important distinction: faster doesn’t mean rushed. It means the process runs smoothly because it’s been properly designed.

Academic studies say the same.

Research published in the International Journal of Social Science and Research Review showed that poor human-resource planning and weak job definition were major causes of longer time-to-hire and higher turnover.

Another study in MDPI’s Education Sciences Journal found that organisations with a defined, transparent hiring structure achieved better fit, shorter hiring cycles, and stronger performance.

This is what our Hire Faster method is built around — doing the right work early so you don’t lose time later.

Here’s what that means in practice.

1. Hone the brief

Before you open applications, get crystal clear on what this person actually needs to deliver. What will they spend their time doing? What outcomes will they own? How will success be measured? It sounds basic, but it’s the single biggest reason hiring stalls. If you’re unclear about what you want, no candidate can meet it.

2. Define the right person

Once the role is clear, focus on who’s likely to succeed in it. What kind of mindset, skills, and experience will allow them to perform well in your environment? This isn’t about writing an ideal CV. It’s about identifying real traits that matter — the ones that determine whether someone will thrive or struggle.

3. Test before you decide

Decorators don’t assume a wall’s ready — they check it. In hiring, skills testing serves the same purpose. It saves time by revealing who can actually do the job, not just talk about it. Role-specific assessments take guesswork out of the process and help you shortlist faster and fairer.

4. Run a structured process

A clear sequence keeps everything moving. From application questions that screen out the wrong fit to consistent interview scorecards, structure stops bias and indecision from creeping in. When you take a structured, prepared approach to hiring, the whole experience feels calmer, clearer, and more controlled.

5. Set people up for success

Even after an offer is accepted, preparation matters. A proper onboarding plan means your new hire can hit the ground running and stay for the long term — not disappear three months in. That final layer of prep is what turns a good hire into a lasting one.

Preparation doesn’t slow you down; it removes the obstacles that do.

The decorators reminded me of that this week. The more effort you put into doing things properly at the start, the faster and smoother everything becomes.

Hiring is exactly the same.

If your process feels longer than it should — too many stages, too much back and forth, or too few strong candidates — we can help you fix that.

Our Hire Faster method is built around preparation: defining the role properly, testing for the right skills, and creating a clear, consistent process that gets results.

If you’d like to see how it works, get in touch and we’ll walk you through it.