Have you had struggles in the past in securing the candidate that you want?
Are you about to go into the recruitment process and want some tips on how to make sure you get it right?
We know a bit about recruitment, and what good looks like. So we’ve put together some top tips to help you get it right, every time…
Planning
This stage of the process is vital, just like anything in life, if you want to do something efficiently, you must plan!
This means understanding the role that you are working, the ins and outs, figuring out exactly what your new employee will be doing on a day-to-day basis, who they’ll be working with etc.
Before going into the process, have a rough idea of your ‘ideal’ candidate, but always keep your options open. Someone may surprise you and be a better fit than you ever thought…
Involve more people in the process!
Candidate attraction
We have ranked the 5 best tools for candidate attraction!
- LinkedIn: Used by hundreds of millions worldwide, on a daily basis, LinkedIn is the go-to place to find your highly skilled candidates. Take your time to build your personal brand and engage with others. Show off your employer brand. LinkedIn is an awesome tool for building credibility and finding candidates.
- Job Boards: Some may say they are old fashioned, but you can definitely reach a wider audience. Usually pulling in surface-level candidates who are actively looking. Using your own website to post jobs is a cheaper alternative but won’t reach as many people.
- Internal referral: Past and present employees are bound to know a good fit for your role. An Internal Referral scheme will incentivise employees to make referrals. This can save thousands in recruiter costs.
- Your own ATS: As a recruitment business, we come across this scenario too often: We will present candidates to the hiring manager and receive the reply of- “They are already in our system!” Make sure to use it properly, you might have some awesome candidates sat there.
- Work for us page: More of a passive approach but still hugely important and useful. Candidates want to know all the reasons why they should apply before they do. Make your page targeted and content-rich to get those awesome applicants.
Remember: The “Perfect” candidate does not exist!
Interview Stage
There are 3 main questions that we believe are essential when interviewing:
- Can they do the job? Put in place a competency framework: This allows you to find out the strengths and weaknesses in more detail and you can offer training in any gaps found.
- Do they it in? In order to measure fit, you need to audit your business, people who are successful and the type of company. Ask what is important to you?
- Are they in it for the long run? When recruiting for most of our customers, we advise hiring a candidate able to do a job 2 levels above. This maximises long term hires by being able to offer progression and development. This prevents your employee from feeling they are not progressing and getting frustrated: resulting in a premature exit.
Example interview questions
If you are interviewing candidates, these questions could really help uncover if someone has the right internal and customer culture fit for you team and business.
Internal team fit and management:
- Describe your ideal manager?
- What are the characteristics exhibited by the manager who got the best performance out of you. Please use examples?
- In your opinion, what is leadership?
- What are you famous for in your current company?
- If you started your own company, what would be the first thing you do?
If they are customer facing:
- Its day one in your new role, you’ve been introduced to the team, trained on the systems and your at your desk ready to get going. What’s the first thing you do?
- Tell me about your biggest customer success story?
- Why does success look like to you?
- How do you manage a customer who wants to do it their way, not yours?
This isn’t an exhaustive list but hopefully a good starting point for you. What’s really important is to audit your team and businesses culture before hiring. Maybe ask a sample of the company to answer the same questions periodically to build a culture framework you can measure candidates answers against.
The offer
- Don’t low ball it: Offer a salary you know they will accept. If you’re working with a recruiter, find out what they need to accept early in the process. If it’s too much, move on. If not, don’t low ball it – It can really put off a candidate.
- Move fast: Found the right person? Cancel other interviews and make the offer, get them off the market as soon as possible!
- Make it an event: Bring them in if you can or at least call them personally and tell them. Don’t send a letter or delegate it. The enthusiastic, personal touch has a huge impact and makes the recipient feel wanted.
- Reinstate: Ensure them of their importance and the impact they will have. Make them feel important and wanted.
- Big up the benefits: If you have awesome benefits shout about them. Give them examples of how they positively affect your life.
Things we see far too often
- Long contract proposals: The candidate is lost, wondering whats going on… Giving enough time to accept another offer!
- Lack of communication: The candidate might feel unwelcome and wonder ‘do they actually want me?’
- Communicating only by email: A lot of things can get done in a phone call, while the candidate is waiting for your email response they have received a counter offer!
- Being an unknown figure to the recruiter: How can a recruiter help out if you are an unknown figure, the candidate wants to know about you, to be as prepared as possible.
- Dates for calls/interviews are too far away: Booking an interview for four weeks time? Well, your competitor has got them in for first screening at the end of this week… Seconds, thirds and final stages are all completed before you have even prepared for firsts!
“You always need to remember that candidates are actively searching for a job. They are taking interviews at other business’, have urgency, otherwise, you will lose out!”
To summarise
Plan correctly. Remember what you are getting into, hiring candidates is extremely stressful.
Attract the candidates efficiently in a way that suits you and your business the most
Offer the job with care. They are your new colleague that’s just made a life-changing decision. Make an effort to make them feel welcomed so they don’t second guess themselves.
Now we have showed you everything we think you need to know, make sure to implement the techniques into your next process. Any further enquiries feel free to get to in touch with us, we’re always happy to chat.
