Recruiting the right person at the right time is often the key to enabling a business to grow whilst maintaining that high standard of customer service upon which the company’s good name and standing are built.
But with demands on our time already so numerous, it can often seem an easier option to just put our heads down and soldier on. However, this is rarely the solution! So why not bite the recruitment bullet and follow our top tips for hiring good people?
- Know who you want both in terms of skill and attitude – make a list of the tasks and responsibilities of the role and another of the type of qualities you’d like in a person representing your business and working in your team.
- Avoid school gate recruitment – similarly employing the neighbour’s best friend’s son who happens to be available. Unless of course he ticks the boxes on your two lists!
- Put together a job advert and post it on job boards – hiringpeople.co.uk can help make sure that the wording of your advert attracts the maximum applicants. They can also provide advertising packages at a fraction of the cost of going direct to the various job sites.
- Start with a telephone interview – it’s a fantastically time efficient way to get an initial feel for your candidates. But have a list of questions and make sure you use it for each of them – it makes it so much easier to compare candidates afterwards. If you’re stuck for ideas then you can download our free example at evolveandgrowcoaching.com/book-downloads. It’s called Telephone Interview and focuses on roles for Trade businesses but can be easily adapted for any sector.
- Consider using psychometric testing for your shortlist – especially for office based roles. A personality test will highlight how likely someone is to enjoy the role while general reasoning indicates how quickly they might hit the ground running. These are extremely useful indicators which can be used in conjunction with your other selection processes. Just be aware that personality based testing should only be used to help inform your choice and not as the deciding factor.
- The face to face interview – once again, we have a guide for that at evolveandgrowcoaching.com/book-downloads. This enables you to score each candidate on the answers they give. Your notes from these and the telephone interviews also provide a useful reminder of your thinking should there ever be a query over the recruitment.
- And finally – process is important, but so is gut instinct. So do bear in mind whether you can see yourself working with your candidates!