Recruiting the right employee to fit the job opening in your business can be a tricky feat, but it’s well worth the effort if you find the perfect candidate.
Hiring the right talent can mean the difference between an engaging, helpful, and knowledgeable staff, and a staff that barely seems capable of working as a cohesive unit. Employees that work well together are less likely to leave their positions as well.
There are many more reasons why you should hire the perfect person for the job, but in the end, they will ultimately determine how successful your business will be.
Here are a few tips to ensure you recruit top talent and maintain an engaged company culture.
Cleary Define the Job Position
How you describe the details of the job when creating a listing for an open position can greatly affect who applies.
The last thing you want to do is deter the better candidates with a job posting that isn’t fully accurate. One study found that listing responsibilities and requirements wasn’t as effective at garnering attention from qualified applicants as listing ways in which the job can benefit the employee.
By letting the candidates know that the company will focus on them, they are more drawn to the company than to another that only lists demands and stipulations.
Screen Candidates Prior To Interview
One of the best ways to ensure the right person is given the job is to prescreen every candidate before a face-to-face interview with higher management. This ensures upper management do not waste their time with unqualified candidates and saves the company valuable time, especially when done over the phone. In some cases, candidates might even have excellent resumes with the perfect level of experience, but that doesn’t mean they’ll fit with the culture of your company.
Pay Attention to Soft Skills
This is another great reason to prescreen. Candidates can easily create a list of their hard skills, like proficiency with certain software, experience in management, or typing speed. However, it’s difficult to convey soft skills without having a conversation with someone.
These include communication skills, emotional intelligence, interpersonal skills, thought processes, and general reactions. It’s possible that a candidate might have the exact set of skills you require, but they have no ability to properly communicate or work with others. Hard skills can be taught; however, soft skills are harder to teach and are just as important.
Look for Personality Compatibility
While it might seem as if there are a general set of desired personality traits that could fit into any job, it is simply not true. Sometimes, it takes certain characteristics to be suited for a job, but make sure the personality of a job candidate fits with the general feeling and culture of the company where they will work.
For instance, a person who has great empathy might make an excellent nurse, but that same person might make a horrible lawyer or police officer. How well a person can communicate and work with their colleagues is important and can make a real difference in the productivity of your company. The idea is to find a candidate with a personality that matches the job and existing company and team culture.
Check Social Media
Social media is something of a double-edged sword when it comes to the hiring process. While it’s not technically legal in most places to avoid hiring someone based solely off something found on their public social media pages, checking those pages can give you a better sense of the person in general. You might not like what you find, but in many cases, you might discover even more reasons to hire the candidate. Perhaps they use social media as a professional tool, or they write a periodical blog post with a high number of followers. In either case, more information about the candidate is always better.
Ask the Right Questions
Questions are the soul of an interview, and it’s vital that you ask the right ones if you want to truly gain a perspective on the candidate. You can ask questions about their experience and qualifications, but you should also ask them more broad questions so you can see how they respond under pressure.
Give them situations and ask them to describe how they would react. Ask them questions that aren’t even related to the job so you can assess their ability to think creatively. Make sure to cater the questions to the position.
Use Entry/Exit Surveys to Improve
Entry and exit surveys are excellent tools for collecting insights about your recruiting and on boarding practices. New hires can offer honest systematic feedback, which will help you hone in your process down into something even more efficient. These surveys can be basic, but they should cover key topics like communication, interview experience, and on boarding effectiveness.
About Abby Drexler
Abby Drexler is a contributing writer and media specialist for Management Training Institute. She regularly produces content for a variety of management and workplace blogs.
