How to Hire a New Employee

Ray Kroc says, "You're only as good as the people you hire". With this in mind, hiring is indeed a vital component of organizational success and thus, must be done with care. Contrary to common practice, there are a great many steps involved in hiring a new employee, each of them valuable to ensuring recruitment success. You have a job description…But where should you put it?!Just as important as having an engaging and informative job description, is knowing where best to advertise it! You must be prepared to do your research and find out where potential applicants are hanging out these days and how best to reach them. Understand that the newspaper is sitting at home, while job seekers are chatting it up on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Know your resourcesNetworking is vital to recruitment success. When people know who you are and what you are all about, applicants can come to you! Networking also helps to identify your hiring resources such as outsourcing firms, recruitment agencies, and employment initiatives. Do you have time to recruit? Are other projects taking up your time? You must consider the pros and cons of using other alternatives to traditional recruitment. Pre-screening and ShortlistingThe hiring manager sits at his/her desk, scans through piles of received resumes, selects a few CVs that stand out and begins scheduling interviews. What's wrong with this picture? Why sit through an interview, only to find out that the applicant you are interviewing was only looking for part time hours, or seeks a salary that your organization cannot accommodate?! It is much more efficient to quickly pre screen applicants on important deal breaking points, prior to a face to face interview.Ask Right to Hire RightDon't scramble, five minutes before the interview, to print off a generic template of standardized, impersonalized questions. Take time to develop interview questions that relate directly to the job in question, as well as the candidate. In return, you will receive the meaningful answers you need to make a sound hiring decision. A recruitment agency should do this for you.The Interview Went Great! Now What?Reference checks! Any charmer can prepare for the standard interview questions, put on a sharp looking suit and smile through an interview. Once the novelty of a new opportunity wears though, who will this person really be? Ask their past employers. This important and often neglected step in the hiring process will provide you with comparison against the candidate's answers, and against your impression.You've Made a Choice And Your New Star Starts on Monday! Wait! You are still not finished!Have you so quickly forgotten all of the other great people you've met during this process? Those people have put their time and effort into this process too. They deserve a phone call! Do not forget to notify those applicants who did not make the cut. There may have been a star or two in there who may fit the business in future roles. Don't burn those bridges!As the market place becomes busier and the drive for competitive advantage becomes all the more pressing, important hiring action items can get overlooked in the race. Don't let your team suffer by not knowing these important steps when the time comes to hire a new employee.