If you have a solid recruitment process you will save yourself time, attract top talent, and help your bottom line in terms of lowering hiring costs or expensive firing for a mishire.
If you don’t have an HR department or only a small staff, streamlining the processes.
1: HAVE A DATABASE
You may not be able to hire now, but that’s no reason not to have interviews. Make sure you have a database to save resumes, contact information, and record conversations you’ve had. Someone you speak to now may be good for your company a year from now. My company uses www.hireplanner.com for our internal hiring database.
2: DOCUMENT
Document what constitutes a great employee. Put in writing the accountable aspects and competencies required for each position. using metrics that exactly entails success and failure. When I show examples to managers, they often smile and say, "This is exactly what we have searched for." Send me a message to david.sweet@focuscoregroup.com if you would like to see a sample.
3: SCREEN WITH TELEPHONE
When you see a resume that looks good, conduct a quick telephone screening interview. Many companies spend a lot of time meeting people that could have been screened out in a 10 minute telephone interview. Here is what you ask:
Have the candidate briefly introduce themselves.
What are their strengths?
What are their weaknesses?
Why are they interested in your position and company?
Finish the call telling the person about your company and why it’s the best company in the world! This is your chance to sell.
If the candidate still sounds good after a brief call, have a proper interview.
4: INTERVIEW
An interview should have some standard questions. Each of your positions may also have specific skill based questions for accounting, finance, payroll, supply chain, etc.
Here is a standard list of questions that I usually use.
What were you hired to do (for each position)?
What were your accomplishments (in each position)?
What were your failures or mistakes and how did you learn from them?
What was your team like?
Why did you leave the company?
5. REFERENCE CHECK
Often companies skip this critical step. Don't. When discrepancies appear, then you have an opportunity to pass up before they are hired, and in the long run, saving you and your company much time, energy, and money.
These 5 steps are the bare bones of creating a recruitment process for your organization that our clients say attracts and retains the top talent. Now is the time to start building your database and build a good system to screen that talent.
