Hiring the wrong candidate is time-consuming, expensive, hurts productivity, and negatively impacts the overall work environment and employee relationships. Read on for 11 tips to hire the right
employee to enhance your company’s work culture, improve employee morale, and achieve your goals.
1. Define the job
A job description infers that only suitable candidates send their applications. When you list a job opening with the relevant information about the responsibilities, challenges, and expectations, it’s more likely that you’ll have experienced applicants applying for the role.
Be sure to conduct a job analysis before advertising a job opening to gain more insights into the specific requirements and responsibilities for a particular position. Consider interviewing employees in the same position about additional traits, skills, and responsibilities required to succeed in that particular role. This helps you give applicants a clear understanding of the open position to help them evaluate whether or not they fit.
2. Create an employee recruitment strategy
Developing an employee recruitment strategy enables you to identify and appeal to the ideal candidate pool. To create an effective recruitment strategy, liaise with the key individuals involved in the hiring process, including the human resource manager or your team members. Your recruitment strategy should focus on where to publish the job opening, the ideal questions to ask the interviewees, and the person responsible for conducting the interview. This will ensure your employee recruitment panel reads from the same page about the type of candidate you want for your team.
3. Pre-screen the applicants
A job posting will likely attract many potential candidates, and it may be challenging to schedule a face-to-face interview with all of them. Save your interviewing and selection time by pre-screening the candidates to narrow down the applicant list further. Have a skilled employer conduct an over-the-phone interview to establish whether or not an applicant is fit for the open position.
The interviewer can ask questions about the applicant’s relevant experience to the role, their salary expectation, and their ideal work environment. The applicant’s responses can then help choose the most qualified individuals for a face-to-face interview, saving time.
4. Perform reference and background checks
Performing reference and background checks are one of the most crucial aspects of hiring the right employees. It lets you verify that all the information presented by a candidate, including credentials, experience, and skills, is legit before making your final decision.
You could contact the candidate’s references and ask them relevant questions that help you determine the applicant’s performance and whether they will meet and fulfill their role in your organization. Depending on your company and the open position, you could check the candidate’s credit and criminal history. Have they been arrested? Do they have a criminal record? Performing these checks will help you enhance your overall security.
5. Test the applicants
While a candidate may look good on paper, it is prudent to provide tests and assignments, especially when hiring for a position that requires specific skills. Using these methods, you’ll be able to ascertain the skills a candidate claims to possess on their resume.
You could also have the candidates take a personality test to understand their behavior, including communication and work skills. A personality test can help you know how the potential employees could behave in specific situations, including those that involve conflict.
6. Be creative on your job interview questions
Asking the right interview questions can make the difference between hiring the most qualified candidate and an average employee. Most applicants often study the commonly asked questions during an interview, then practice their answers. This means that you may not get the desired insights about a candidate as you would wish.
Research unique questions that enable you to learn more about the interviewees. You do not even have to focus on work-related questions solely. Ask quirky queries that break the tension in an interview to make the interviewee more comfortable while allowing you to tap into their personality. Some creative interview questions you should consider asking include:
7. Be keen on the questions the candidate asks
A productive interview session should be a dialogue and not a question-answer session, where you ask the questions, and the candidate responds. An ideal candidate should not only give the correct responses during the interview. They should also ask thoughtful queries to show engagement and preparedness throughout the process.
Pay attention to the questions the candidate asks to gauge alignment. A candidate who asks about which team they will be on, who is in charge, and how they can help the team achieve its goals should be at the top of your list.
8. Do not overlook the warning signs
While applicants strive to bring forward their best self throughout the interview process, you should watch for behaviors that highlight the interviewees’ work performance and personality. Some warning signs you should not ignore include being late for interviews, unpreparedness, and only highlighting the negative qualities of the previous employers.
9. Implement a panel interview
Once you narrow down your employee search to a few qualified candidates, you could consider conducting a group interview. For a group interview, have a few members of your team interview the potential hires. Be sure to liaise with the staff to develop ideal questions to ask the potential employee and how they will gauge performance.
A panel interview allows a potential employee to meet and interact with the people they will work with when hired. You can also understand whether the candidate will effectively collaborate with your team based on the interactions. Group interviews also allow you to tap into your existing employees’ perspectives of the candidate based on their expectations and requirements.
10. Take your time
Do not let the pressure to fill a position make you rush the hiring process. You will end up hiring a person who does not fit the job description if you do not take your time.
Slowly handling the hiring process will save you from the cost and time you will spend on another recruitment if your new hire does not match the responsibilities. It also shows your current employees that you care who they end up working with or who manages or leads them.
11. Hire interns
If you are looking to forego the cost and time spent recruiting new employees, you should consider incorporating interns into your company. Whether you establish a formal or informal program with paid or unpaid benefits, you could have interns work with your team to gain hands-on experience. In case of a job opening, you could hire the intern full-time. Since you have been working with the interns, you already understand their knowledge, skills, and personalities. You also have established a relationship, enabling you to choose the right fit for specific roles.
Endnote
Hiring an employee who complements your team’s morale and work culture is critical to achieving your company’s bottom line and standing out from the competition. Be sure to define the job, create a recruitment strategy, prescreen candidates, perform background checks, ask creative questions, and take your time to hire the right employees.
