The Hiring flywheel

Hiring is a challenge for all companies, costing lots of time and money. A community-based hiring flywheel can help by producing quality candidates who are already familiar with the company and its product.

This flywheel often starts when a user falls in love with a product, begins advocating for it in the community, and then joins the company to work on the product full-time.

Example flywheel motion

1. Sally is introduced to the product by Neil
2. Sally falls in love with the product
3. Sally starts helping other people use it
4. Company notices and assigns Sally the community role of Ambassador
5. Sally does so well that the company hires Sally full time 🎉
6. In her new role, Sally introduces the product to Buzz
7. Back to step 2 with Buzz...

The great thing about flywheels is that outputs from later steps feed back into earlier ones. As Sally discovers more future advocates, some will enter the flywheel as Buzz has done. Once they reach later stages, they'll find future advocates too.

Metrics to watch

• Member questions answered
• Member content created
• Candidates referred by community
• Referred candidates hired

The outcome of this funnel can measured by the number of candidates applied, given offers, and hired. Looking at all these metrics together will help make sure that not only is the flywheel product candidates, but that some of these are a good fit for the company.