How to hire better talent for your company: pro tips from managers

Hiring managers and HR employees spend a lot of time in their search for the best employee. Especially in those industries with plenty of candidates per position, making sure that only true talents are hired, is somewhat difficult. The entire process is hard, from attracting the right candidates to asking the right interview questions and evaluating correctly each employee. It’s no wonder that many unprepared individuals end up on positions that demand a high degree of skill and preparation. And if you’re not careful enough, this unsuccessful process might eat up all your time. Strategy and execution have to be carefully integrated into certain timeframes for a successful recruitment process. Regardless of all the difficulties involved by finding a great hire, we have some pieces of advice that will certainly help.

Initial Screenings Should be Automated

Initial screenings should be automated depending on the position for which your company is hiring. Luckily, there is an enormous number of ways to automate this step. From asking the candidates to solve a small quiz or test (2-4 questions should do), to asking them to record a video of themselves answering those, writing a sample of customer support email and so on, these methods will help you select only those candidates with a great potential for the positions open at your company. However, remember that this might be quite of a lengthy process, and you might be able to only deal with it after the working hours, as HR managers and employees have their schedules full. But this will certainly help you save time that you would have otherwise spent with interviewing too many candidates.

Your Interviews Should Only Be Conducted on the Most Relevant Medium for the Position

We tend to think that in-person interviews are the only viable option, regardless of the position. While for certain roles in your company this might be true, it’s not always the perfect interviewing model. For many roles, such as call centre positions, conduct a telephone interview. For customer representatives position, the first interview should be through an email exchange, or whatever other medium is the most relevant for the given position.

Doing in-person interviews for positions that have nothing to do with in-person interactions will most likely sway your opinion to candidates that are very charismatic in person, but not necessarily in the medium they will be working. In-person interviews should come later for such positions if you want to test for company culture fit or other variables that might be valuable to your company.

Check Their Social Media Accounts

If you want to check if a certain employee is a good fit for your company culture, values and goals, you can simply have a closer look at their social media accounts. Use the people search tool that Facebook has, type their name and see if the content shared is offensive or doesn’t align with the values to which your company holds tightly. See if they share useful information and articles from the industry that you activate in and check to see if they have a conflictual attitude. If this is the case, you might want to avoid hiring such individuals, if this is the case. They will introduce a toxic and conflictual atmosphere in your company, which will most likely damage other employees’ morale.

Think of the Hiring Process as a Weeding-Out Process

Many employees give up in the hiring process, even if they might look like a perfect fit, specifically because they don’t want to go through a lengthy hiring process. While many might see this as a bad thing, look on the bright side. If they are not willing to pass through the entire interviewing process, they might not be such a great fit as you now think. This is sort of a weeding our process, and if a candidate is not willing to go through it, they might not be willing to go through other internal protocols your company has. Instead of changing the recruitment protocols to accommodate candidate’s wishes and desires, search for candidates that are committed and disciplined enough to follow all the necessary steps. After all, you don’t want to hire a person that will leave at the first difficulty, you want to find a candidate that will remain with your company for years – and this is how you IDENTIFY A BAD HIRE.

There’s Nothing Wrong with Saying No

There are plenty of things that might go wrong when hiring, but the most damaging that can happen is hiring the wrong candidates. Getting on board, training them and then making sure that they carry all their duties and attributes with responsibility and dedication is resource consuming. So, if you don’t think that the selection process was a successful one, don’t be afraid to say no to an unfit candidate. In the long run, this will only make your company lose time and money with an employee that was clearly unsuitable from the very beginning. It’s difficult to find the necessary confidence to pass on a candidate that seems unfit, but it’s better for your company and your image as an HR manager. Think of the bright side: now you have an efficient recruitment process established, and more chances to find the right one.

Selecting a candidate for the positions open at your company is never an easy process. It’s time and money consuming, it can turn out to be a lengthy one, and in the end, some candidates that remain might be the worst fit for your company. However, this doesn’t mean that you have failed as a hiring manager, it only means that the wrong candidates applied for the role your company has. It might also mean that the local recruitment pool might have decreased its quality and you will have to start searching for suitable candidates in other locations. But make sure to follow the pieces of advice above for a more facile and successful hiring process.  

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