Hiring the right people for your company is a daunting task. That’s why so many large companies outsource this task to headhunters and recruitment specialists so that they don’t have to deal with all the headache that goes into finding the right employees.
If you own a company, you know how hard it is to find the right talent. You’re always on the lookout for the perfect candidate, but let us tell you — the perfect candidate doesn’t exist. However, you can maximize your chances of finding a near-perfect with the right balance of hard skills, soft skills, and talent. But doing that isn’t easy. You need to consider several aspects before making a hiring decision that will benefit your company in the long term.
How to Hire People for your Company?
Do you have a presence on LinkedIn?
Unless you live under a rock, you’ll have your company page on LinkedIn. This social media platform is a living and breathing space for professionals and employers alike, allowing them to connect with each other seamlessly. Therefore, having a LinkedIn account for your company is the first step toward having an online pool of fit candidates for your company.
However, just having a social media page doesn’t suffice. You need to invest your time and effort to make it look professional and appealing. You must also increase engagement by posting valuable content specific to your industry. For example, suppose you’re a small construction firm. In that case, you can post videos on how to distribute the electricity load in your project or something specific that caters to a particular profession. Make sure you’re posting regularly because that’s the only way to garner traction.
Before rolling out content regularly, it’s vital to decorate your LinkedIn page with the necessary visuals. Visuals are a must because they’re eye-grabbing and will help people land on your LinkedIn page. We suggest using LinkedIn banners for your page’s cover photo.
Be active on other social media platforms
LinkedIn isn’t the end of the story; you need to be active on other social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. Which platforms are right for you depends on your target audience. For example, if you’re a luxury apparel brand, you need to be on Instagram because your business needs a lot of visuals and Instagram is all about fashion and dynamic content.
One thing’s true — being on other social media platforms will drive traction for your brand, but how will it help you hire the best of the best? The answer to that is simple. Being on social media and posting valuable content will get you the traction you need to create a brand image for your customers and future employees. Once your brand identity penetrates potential candidates, they’ll come rushing toward you for that job offer.
Having said that, you need to post your jobs on all social media channels, especially LinkedIn. On other social media platforms, we recommend putting up dynamic hiring posters that outline all the essentials of the job and what you’re looking for in a candidate. Make sure you present all the information in your poster, including the designation, responsibilities, technical skills, educational background required, and a compensation plan. Leave as little margin for guesswork as you can.
Instead of hiring a graphic designer to craft your job posters, why not use an online graphic design tool like PosterMyWall to prepare them yourself? It’s simple and only needs a few clicks.
Evaluate your company’s culture
Hiring the right candidates isn’t all about finding the mix of skills, academic credentials, and work experience. It’s also very much about whether the person you’ll hire will fit in with your company’s culture. For example, an excellent marketing manager with all the skills and a large portfolio to showcase without the ability to work in a team won’t do you any good. Before you jump on to recruiting, ask yourself these questions:
- What is my company’s mission, and what attributes can an employee bring to the table to help achieve the company’s goals?
- What is the company’s work culture? Do you reward innovation? Do you have a strict bureaucracy? Do you encourage employees’ out-of-the-box thinking, or are you more systems driven?
Once you have the answers to the above questions, you’ll have a fair idea of what you’re looking for in an employee. The bottom line is you want an employee with the right mix of skills, work experience, and academic credentials, coupled with the right mindset and attitude towards the company.
On to the vetting process
Once your job ad is out there, expect to receive hundreds or even thousands of resumes. Most of these will be from unfit candidates, but you’ll have to look at each resume carefully before discarding it.
Another aspect you should be mindful of is how to look beyond the CV. Look at the candidate’s aspirations. For instance, a candidate who wants to build a career in a multinational firm probably won’t be in for the long haul in a small company.
Also, look out for candidates with just the right mix of technical skills, work experience, educational credentials, and anything else the job may require. These are the candidates you should be hunting for. Once you’ve shortlisted these resumes, you must have a second of reviews where you further narrow down your pool of candidates.
Online tests and assessments are key
Once you have the final shortlisted candidates, get back to them via email and ask them to do a short test. This will help you gauge whether what they’ve written in their resumes is exaggerated or not. For instance, if you’re looking for a software engineer, send a short assessment, asking the candidates to write a particular code that performs a specific function.
Don’t forget to give a deadline for the test, and note which candidate responds with a notification of the receipt of your email and which one sends you back the test the earliest. If a candidate does both these things and excels in your test, they’re the right candidate to call for an interview.
If you feel the candidates’ test results don’t distinguish them from each other, send them another test but this time, make sure it’s very specific to the job you’re offering. Tests are crucial for picking out the best of the best, but as we said, look out for the little things like how a candidate drafts their response email and how much eagerness they show to work at your company.
Interviews are the best way to gauge candidates
The next step after shortlisting candidates is to call them for an interview. We recommend having a series of interviews divided into multiple rounds. For instance, the first round should be a preliminary interview where you go over the candidate’s work experience and educational background on the surface.
The next round should be more technical, where you gauge the candidate’s skillset in a particular job. Here, you ask the candidate questions about his skills, preferably by assessing them on the spot with questions and hypothetical scenarios of how they would come out of a particular situation.
These types of interviews where you ask candidates how they’ve dealt with specific challenges previously is called behavior-based interviewing. This technique is instrumental in helping you determine a candidate’s real-life problem-solving skills.
Evaluate if an employee is in for the long haul
This is perhaps the most important question you need to ask yourself when interviewing a candidate. Consistency is what you need in a candidate — someone who will stick with you, preferably till the end, but such employees are hard to come by.
To determine if an employee will stick around, you need to check their work history with other employers. For instance, if they have jumped around companies quite often, ask questions about why they were so inconsistent and why they left each company after such a short while.
The ideal candidate would have worked with a company for at least 3 to 4 years before making a switch. The reason why it’s so important to find a candidate that’s looking for a long-term career in your company is that you’re investing in them. You’ll train them and help them hone their skills. And if they end up leaving, all that effort will go to waste.
A few parting thoughts
There’s no one right way to hire the best candidates because job requirements differ from case to case. Some jobs such as marketing and sales need team players, whereas some prefer hard skills over soft skills. So, the first step is to identify what you’re exactly looking for in a candidate and then carry on with the thorough vetting process described above.
Lastly, companies often focus too much on hiring the right candidates, ignoring how to retain the right employees, so they don’t leave. The key to having the right team involves both dimensions — hiring the right people and retaining them for your company’s long-term mission.
