Image via pixabay

By Nigel Hilton

Some people believe that the hiring process is the same for every business. While the concept of searching for candidates and hiring them to be employees is the same, the actual process you go through can differ greatly.

In fact, it’s often something that separates the best from the rest. With the perfect process, you will hire the best candidates without needing to spend lots of money doing so. You should also see a relatively quick and smooth process from start to finish, without it dragging out for months on end.

That’s what the bulk of this article is going to focus on; how can you devise the perfect hiring process? I’ll provide a comprehensive guide, but first, let’s look at a few reasons why it’s important you sort this process out.

The Importance Of A Good Hiring Process

There are a few key benefits you see from developing a good process by which to hire new employees. These are listed below:

 

• Save money: with the right process you can avoid spending too much money when it comes to hiring new team members
• Hire better people: improve your business on the whole by finding the best candidates possible and not hiring people that aren’t worthy of their wage
• Waste less time: don’t spend months looking for one role, wasting time you could devote to your business

 

All these things will ultimately add up to lead to a better, more productive, and more fruitful business. Now, let’s start looking at how you can improve your hiring process from start to finish.

Image from Flickr

Creating The Right Job Adverts

Step one is creating the right adverts for the jobs you’re offering. This is key if you want to attract as many people as possible to the role, while also enabling you to syphon out the best from the rest.

 

There are three main considerations here: the attractiveness of the ad, the ad placement, and the job explanation.

Advert Attractiveness

Here, you need to think about creating your job advertisement, so it catches the attention of prospective job seekers. The key to this is using certain buzzwords that leap out from the page. Mainly, you should state the job title nice and clear. This will help when people search for jobs like yours, and also ensures you get the specific candidates finding your advert. If you have a specific role like Marketing Assistant, but you advertise it as Admin Assistant, then you’ll have loads of under-qualified people finding your advert. So, get the title down properly and the list the main roles that the candidate will be expected to do. This gets them intrigued as they’ll see things they can do. Finally, make sure to include information about your company and why they’d want to work for you. This helps create excitement and make your business seem a desirable place to work.

Advert Placement

You will be pleased to know that this is one of the most straightforward parts of the process. Essentially, you need to place your advert in places where it will be seen. Your best bet here is job websites. Companies can place job listings on websites for free, and loads of job seekers will find them. What’s more, a lot of these websites send job seekers emails when new roles are advertised that might interest them. So, the sites do most of the initial work for you in finding people that might be keen to apply.

Job Description

This is similar to the job attractiveness but it focuses more on the explicit details of the role, and the skills required. Instead of saying the job involves ‘computer skills’ get specific about what software they need to use and what skills are essential. List all the essentials, including any qualifications and experience too. This is the best way to ensure you get the right candidates for the job. Only people that tick everything off the essential list will be seriously considered for this job.

Choosing The Candidates For Interviews

Next, it’s time to figure out who you will pick to take part in an interview. What’s more, you also need to consider how the interview will be laid out, and who will conduct it. These are the main things to think about in this part of the process.

Selecting The Interviewees

Here, you need to go through all the applications and measure them up against your parameters. It’s a simple case of comparing what’s on a resume and job application to what’s on your job description list. Do they tick all the right boxes? If so, consider inviting them down. Also, think about where they live too. If they’re not from close by then, transport might be an issue leading to repetitive lateness that you can’t afford to have. You also want to ensure you have a decent amount of candidates to choose from here. Ideally, pick all the people that pass the test and cross everything off your list.

The Interview Itself

The way you structure the interview plays a key role in determining if you hire the right person. Simply conducting a conversation about their life and experience isn’t enough. Yes, you need to ask the important questions like what they did in their old job and how their experience or skills will help them in this role. However, it’s highly recommended you incorporate a situational judgement test in there too. Ask them questions about certain situations they may end up in at work, and see how they solve the problems. There are some great examples of questions you can use on The National Center For The Middle Market’s website. Questions like these are designed to make candidates get into the zone of working for your company. Furthermore, they help catch out people that might be trying to bluff their way through everything and claim to have experience or know-how that simply isn’t there. Always end the interview by asking if they have any questions. This is a sneaky way to find out who’s the most eager for the job and has prepared some stuff to ask you.

Who Conducts The Interview?

As for who conducts the interview, well, there’s one idea that’s perfect. Often, there’s the struggle of deciding whether you’ll conduct it or hire a recruitment agency to do it for you. Personally, I think a recruitment agency is worth the expense. By investing in them, you can go about your daily tasks and keep working on your business, limiting any downtime. They find the candidates for you, post the advert, conduct the interview to your desires, then tell you who they like the best. If you want, you could also sit in on the interviews, though it’s not necessary.

Image via pixabay

Completing The Hiring Process

Finally, we’ve reached the last stage; finalizing everything and completing the process. There are a couple of things you can add at the end of your hiring process to further ensure you find the right candidates.

Background Checks

Before you get them to sign any contract, you should run a background check on them. See if they have a criminal record that they’ve hidden from you, or if there’s any more info you should know. Now is a good time to check their references too so you can be sure all the dates of previous employment add up. Also, ask previous employers how they performed and why they might have been let go.

Training

While your choice of candidate may well have the right skills and qualifications for your job, they still need to be trained a little bit beforehand. Train them to use the systems you implement on your computers, and just help them learn how everything runs around here. There are companies like ej4 that offer e-Learning videos for employees, which could come in handy. Videos are a very easy way to get your new employees to learn things without taking up too much time. Essentially, they can learn on the job.

Trial Period

Finally, it makes sense to incorporate a trial period into your hiring process. This coincides with their training and is basically a period to help them settle in. Or, more accurately, to see if they settle into their role. You may find after a couple of weeks that they just aren’t the fit you’d thought they would be. This is rare, particularly if you followed all the other steps, but it can happen. Incorporating a trial period into their contract, where you have the right to let them go, will help you deal with a tough situation should they not live up to your high standards.

On that note, we’ve come to the end of this guide. I know it’s a lot to take in, but if you’ve made it this far then, I applaud you. Hopefully, you’ve been able to digest the information and pick up on the advice given. Now, you can restructure your hiring process to make it perfect from start to finish. This will result in better hires, an improved team dynamic, and more business success.