Hiring the right people is crucial to a successful business (we’re sure we don’t have to tell you!). Every moment you spend recruiting and training is time you’re not spending performing your actual job, so it truly pays to make sure you hire the right people for the right role first try.
Here are some effective tips to improving your hiring process to ensure your chances of securing the best people for your business are the best they can be.
1. Always Have a Clear Objective
During the hiring process, and in particular, when you’re at the interview stage, it’s easy to favour a candidate who seems confident and friendly. However, as we all know, just because you can crack a joke with someone, doesn’t mean they are the best fit for a role – sadly!
Hiring decisions must always be as objective as possible. That means understanding clearly from the get-go precisely what you need from your future hire.
Hard skills and education are definitely important, but they aren’t the be all and end all. Take the time to write out a list of the soft skills and personality traits that you think would make someone a great fit for the role and your tea – perhaps these tie into your company values. Then, whenever you’re assessing candidates you can compare their qualifications, experience and interview notes to your criteria list. It sounds simple but it’s an incredibly effective way of ensuring someone ticks all the boxes, quite literally.
2. Look at Everything
It can sometimes feel that with any job application there are too many places to look at for information about the candidate. With a CV, cover letter and LinkedIn profile, as well as references, skills tests and your interview notes that’s a whole lot of things to consider. But piece these elements together and you get the whole story.
So try not to focus too heavily on any one of these resources. Yes, someone’s CV might make them look like they fit the bill perfectly, but could they pass any assessments or skills tests sufficiently?
Comparing these different sources of information will help you spot discrepancies between them and paint a clearer picture of each candidate.
3. Seek Advice From Others
There definitely is such a thing as ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’, but it’s always worth checking in with other key people in your organisation to help sense check your decisions.
This is perhaps even more important for employers trying to fill highly technical roles. When you are assessing each candidate, consider if it’s possible to speak with a head of department, team leader or technical specialist of some sort to get additional feedback on the specific skills required for that role (if you haven’t done so already). Perhaps you could share skills test results or invite them to join you at the interview stage.
You’ll need to strike a balance, though, between asking for help and making timely decisions. With too many people involved, you may find the hiring process becomes drawn out. At some point, you’ll need to make the call (and in this market, the sooner the better or you risk missing out on your preferred candidate), so ensure you keep the recruitment process progressing to get your new team member on board as soon as possible.
4. Move Quickly but Don’t Rush
Everyone knows that moving quickly is vital in such a competitive market but this needs to be balanced out with not rushing and making the wrong decision. A great candidate can set a business up for success for years, while a wrong one can cost thousands of dollars and lead to needing to repeat the process all over again.
The key to making a fast but well-informed decision rather than a rushed one is adequate preparation and streamlining your process. Before you start hiring, plan ahead and make sure you understand the steps you need to take and give yourself enough time to move through each one.
Consider eliminating any extra steps that slow down the recruitment process without adding much value (such as multiple rounds of interviews) and look for opportunities to be more proactive and efficient. For example, it’s often a good idea to ask for reference details in the initial application so that you’re able to start calling the referees of shortlisted candidates as soon as their interview is over and get the information you need to make a decision, sooner.
Getting Help From Professionals Can Take Some of the Stress Off
One of the best ways to improve your candidate selection process and alleviate some of the stress is to seek help from the professionals.
Evolve Talent is a specialist recruitment agency with over 15 years’ experience in the Australian Resources & Mining, Healthcare, Design & Construction and Technology sectors. People are at the heart of everything we do, and we know how to run an effective, objective hiring process.
For more ideas to improve recruitment or to learn more about how we can help you find the right people for your business, get in touch with us today.
