Why should I use a Cipher?

Not only will you save the money wasted on hiring the wrong person, but you'll save time in every hiring process. Because time IS money. By leveraging a cipher, you'll be able to move a lot quicker through the hiring process as you'll have a better understanding of what you're looking for. 

iCIMS did a study a few years back on the perceptions of recruiters and hiring managers. 80% of recruiters felt that they had a high to very high understanding of the roles they were recruiting for. Meanwhile, 61% of hiring managers rated the recruiters as having a low to moderate understanding of the roles they are recruiting for.

This isn't meant to bash our friends in Talent Acquisition nor the hiring managers either, but rather to drive home the point that the two most important partners in a recruiting endeavor are mostly not aligned on what is needed in a role.

How many of us have started in a role where our objectives and expectations were not as clear to us as they needed to be? By crisply defining what you're looking for during the hiring process, you'll do a much better job of actually explaining that to the person you hire. 

Rather than guessing how they could possibly be better, you can do a much better job of coaching up that person when you know what good looks like and have defined that through the cipher process.

Once you've taken the time to create a cipher, if you're hiring repeatedly for that role, you can leverage the same document with confidence. This is most applicable to classes of new employees at the frontline of an organization. E.g., sales reps, customer service reps, analysts.

Your ability to close that candidate begins during the interview process if not even before. When you know what you want and can communicate that with clarity, authenticity, and consistency across the hiring team, candidates know that they're dealing with a strong company.