Recruitment can sometimes be challenging and a painful process for any business. Below are few tips.
Define your scope
Define your recruitment requirements clearly by documenting what is required. (What is lacking in your current team.) Do not just go and talk to candidates to see who is available. Write an accurate/ suitable job spec and make it relevant by emphasising on your requirements. Be realistic about what is essential and what is desirable and focus on MUSTs and COULDs.
Create a hiring strategy
Do you have a proper recruitment strategy and a system in place if not take help from an agency? Ask your team whether they know somebody for the job you are hiring.
Use an agency
If you are new or do not have that much experience in hiring, use an agency and they can filter candidates based on your exact requirements. If you take the permanent path use a probation to test the employee.
Evaluate your options with recruitment agencies as there are thousands of recruitment agencies these days but you should analyse them thoroughly before you use them (make recruiters earn your trust).
If you are new to recruitment
Educate yourself with latest recruitment techniques and strategies. If you are a newbie to the recruitment process, get help, get trained and use a mentor to fill your gaps.
Use social media and other online tools
Use LinkedIn strategically to get a clear realistic picture of the candidates as the candidates can use a CV as a brag tool. The LinkedIn is a great tool to identifying and understand the requirements.
Brand yourself and your company
Have a company elevator pitch. Brand yourself in major social media sites and promote employee case studies. Leverage your social profiles to post job openings. Deploy the best possible interviewing techniques in advance. You should “sell” the job first before you shortlist your candidates. Recruitment can affect your employer branding so plan your recruitment strategy before you take initiatives.
Engage with your team
Engage your team and get their opinions in the selecting process.
Selecting process
Ensure all applications are acknowledged, even by using an email auto response message. Respect a candidate’s confidentiality. Keep it confidential even if you find any pitfalls and shortcomings in candidates. Your object is to find the perfect match for your requirements. Do not discriminate. This includes not hiring candidates based on grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage/ civil partnership, maternity, pregnancy, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.
Focus on talent recruitment rather than just people requirement.
Hire a contractor instead of a permie
Test your waters by hiring contractors. Contractors are ideal than going for a permanent option as you can test new technologies and gain quick wins by hiring a contractor.
Never be afraid to offer more responsibility to someone already in your team. This can be an alternative option for recruitment as it opens some options before you have taken the challenging recruitment path.
Also, consider outsourcing to a contractor rather than a full-time employee. Cost can be extraordinary if you hire a permie.
Do not look for a perfection and don’t expect miracles overnight
You should focus on problem-solving and self-starting skills than hiring someone who is skilled in all your set of requirements, but do not expect miracles overnight.
Even if you hire a permanent staff, do not expect miracles to happen overnight as it takes time for the onboarding process and gets the employee up to speed. Always look at the option of hiring a contractor to gain quick wins.
Let your employees tell the story
Give candidates the opportunity to speak with your team. Listen to candidates, you say more when you say nothing at all.
Interview process
During the interview process, be direct and clear with candidates. Do the background check before you call up for an interview. The LinkedIn is a great tool for this exercise. Also, there are a number of online tools available to check the authenticity of the candidates.
Leave your boardroom for interviews. Take candidates for a coffee or even for a lunch to understand the candidate better. Offer flexibility and willingness for the candidates. Be friendly and personable during the interview process. Try to be flexible with interview scheduling. Good candidates are already engaged with various projects so try to be flexible when scheduling/ fixing the interviews.
Move fast in your interview process. Use phone, skype and other online tools to start the interview process. Good candidates won’t stay out of job for long. Test skills and competencies by giving candidates tasks or exercises and ask candidates to give some examples of certain tasks.
Follow the standard set of rules for all interviews and make sure you follow the same set of questions for all the candidates. You can use a scoring strategy to select the best. Use competency based interviews (STAR methodology). Competency based interviews will give you the opportunity to test candidates with where and why strategy. Ensure you make candidates feel comfortable during the interview process. If the candidate is unsuccessful, do not discourage them and always be nice.