Introduction
To run a successful business, it is important to attract and recruit professionals and talents. A group of skilled employees help ensure that your business could meet the needs of your clients and provide them with the perfect products they need. With that said, hiring the right candidates for empty positions could be challenging. It is time-consuming and costly to place the ideal person into the role. Therefore, we are going to introduce you to 10 basic steps to hire the right person for your company.
1. Identify Your Company Gap
The first step is to understand the vacancies in your company that need to be filled. It is easier to figure out who is the best fit for the position after knowing the specific needs of your workplace. Try to ask yourself what kind of people would best fit this job, let’s say what kind of experiences does your company requires, which role do they have to play etc. to grasp a clearer understanding of which kind of candidate you need.
2. Define the job before hiring
After that, you should define the job position you are going to hire, including the job duties, responsibilities, working environment and the required skills. The gathered data will be used to describe the job requirements of the new employee. And with a concise definition of the job, recruitment tactics could be applied more skillfully and accurately.
3. Determine the evaluation and selection strategies
To select the appropriate evaluation and selection strategies for recruitment, having interviews alone is never enough. It might be biased and unfair to solely rely on interviews. Therefore, companies could pair the interviewing process with some surveys to understand their skill set and personality. Selection rubrics with skills, experiences and mindsets aligning with the job description could be created and the recruitment process should provide multiple perspectives on a candidate before making a decision.
4. Prepare and conduct well-structured interviews
Interviews should prepare well-structured interviews with an evaluation scorecard that can be used to rate and compare candidates’ performance according to the set of criteria. For the interview, behavior-based interviewing techniques can be used by demanding candidates to describe how they handled specific challenges in previous work positions. Imaginary situations can also be asked to assess how well the candidates could manage them.
5. Review applications
After the selection process, background information of the candidate intended to employ should be collected. The referees, academic knowledge, past working experiences etc. Also, past criminal history is crucial as part of proper and comprehensive background verification and checking.
6. Implement job auditions
Some companies stop their assessment process at interviews, yet resumes and interviews are hotbeds for lies. Candidates tend to exaggerate their pluses and hide their minuses. It is difficult to see the real picture of the candidate. Therefore job auditions can be a handy tool to help solve the problem.
Job auction works in different ways and forms, here are some examples:
A day in the life: At Mogul, a social media platform, candidates that make it through the interview stage are invited to spend a day in the office working in the hiring team. Since implementing this strategy, no one at Mogul has quit in the past three years.
A contract assignment: At Software Advice, candidate is asked to complete a contract assignment for the blog. Candidates get paid for their work, and they are hired if it is desirable. If the position does not involve a deliverable like a blog or a design, the payment can be skipped and a hypothetical project can be given to complete instead.
An extended tryout: At Automattic, candidates are hired for three to six week trial periods before being hired as full-time.
The great thing about a job audition is killing two birds with one stone. Not only does the business gets an opportunity to see how candidates perform in their desired role, but it also gives candidates a glimpse into what their job and day-to-day will actually entail. Both parties can then make a more confident decision if it’s the right fit or not.
7. Send out job offering and notifications
After selecting a candidate, a job offer letter should be provided. The job offer letter verifies the verbal agreement about salary and benefits. It helps to note down the verbal negotiations done between the employer and employee. The letter layouts some job agreements such as salary, bonus potential, and employment termination, among others.
8. Discuss salary details and start date
The higher the level of the job in your organization, the more likely the candidate will negotiate compensation, paid time off, guaranteed severance pay. These candidates have the most potential to lose if they are leaving a current job and the employment relationship doesn’t work out with you.
That said, some fresh graduates ask for $5,000 more than what they were offered. If it was within the salary range for the job and the candidate is preferred, consider negotiating with the potential new employee. The two most common requests are for a higher starting salary and more paid time off and flexibility is required when negotiating.
9. Onboard your new employee
Once you have recruited the best, you need their full commitment. The retention rate of new employees increases with a solid orientation program. Besides patient training, you might want to consider pairing the new employee with a more experienced staff who can mentor and coach the person during his or her early days in the workplace.
10. Document the hiring process
Last but not least, make sure you document each step of the process and have solid, objective, evidence-based reasons when deciding whether to hire someone or not.
How Zebra can help you
As a leading human resources agency in Hong Kong, Zebra takes pride in providing professional and comprehensive recruitment services. Zebra has a huge candidate pool with lots of talents and experts that suit your role. With a thorough understanding of the job criteria for different positions across different industries in the world, Zebra helps you to select the candidate who is the best fit for the position
