No matter the business’s size, your business culture will drive the type of employees you hire for open positions. While skills and talent are of great importance, you need to hire employees that fit with the company and promote a positive work environment. Every employee you have in your company contributes to the workspace’s morale and energy, and ultimately they represent you and the business to both current and potential customers or clients. Here are nine key steps you need to implement to help in hiring the perfect employee.
Define the Job
Before you post the job online, you must do a job analysis and have a thorough list of job requirements. It would be best to break these into sections such as job description, required skills, education requirements, and environment.
When formulating the job posting, you should use concise wording and bullet points and have a job summary, attitude, and environmental expectations. Chances are you will have many people apply that are not qualified but have defined job requirements, detailed job descriptions, and including the environment and attitude will help pull out applications and resumes of those who match a lot of your keywords.
Plan Your Recruiting Strategy
Generally, a team in the human resources department is dedicated to posting jobs, conducting interviews, and hiring employees in a larger company. However, in a small business, this is generally done by the owner or a trusted employee. Because a smaller business is more intimate, it may be important for all employees to have some input to the hiring and recruiting process.
Create a Checklist
Creating a checklist may seem like a simple process, and in most cases, it is. However, having a checklist of what you need and expect in an employee will help you streamline the hiring process. Creating a checklist can also help keep all current employees involved in the hiring process on the same page as far as expectations and recruits that have potential.
Recruit the Right Candidates When Hiring an Employee
If possible, create the largest talent pool to choose from when hiring a new employee. Use available online tools such as hiring sites and social media to widen your talent pool as much as possible. The more potential candidates you have, the better chance you have of hiring the perfect employee.
Review Applications, Resumes, and Cover Letters Carefully
Have an effective system in place to review cover letters, resumes, and job applications. This process starts with a well-written job description and bullet points and your checklist. Screen all potential candidates against your list of skills, characteristics, job experience, and other important hiring points. Having this part of the process precise and streamlined will ensure that you can narrow the field of good candidates down to great ones.
Prescreen Candidates
While many candidates will look great on paper and have a compelling cover letter, they still may not be the right fit for the position or your company. Before taking the step to set up a face-to-face interview, you should do a phone interview to get an idea if they are still in the running before you go further in the process.
If you feel a candidate isn’t the right fit through the phone interview, you can eliminate them from the process at this point and not waste anyone’s valuable time.
Ask the Right Questions
The hiring team or business owner should develop standard interview questions that will be identical in each interview. This way of designing the interview questions will help you make a side-by-side comparison.
When formulating the questions, make sure every question you ask has value. There should be no throw-away questions to fill time. Organizing the questions will also ensure the interview stays focused and on track.
Do Background Checks and Check References
After you conduct interviews and have further narrowed down the best candidates, you must do thorough background checks. Once candidates have passed these checks, you must check with their references.
In most cases, all of the candidates who have made it this far in the process will also pass these checks. However, there could be candidates in the running that are eliminated because something negative comes up in these checks.
Extend a Job Offer
Once you have completely narrowed the field to the top candidates, you may need to conduct second interviews before making a final decision. When you have decided and have chosen the best candidate, it is time to draw up a job offer.
The job offer should include salary and benefits and the expected start date. Once you have sent the offer, either the candidate will accept the offer, decline it, or make a counteroffer. And the hiring process will come to an end once everyone agrees.
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