How to Choose the People You Should Hire in Your Business

**Require Applicants to Finish a Task **

The application process is completely dependent on the Human Resource department and therefore varies from one employer to another. Some employers think it is better to require an additional task for applicants to make sure that the most fitting employee is hired. As an employer, it would certainly be better if you can access the technical skills of the applicants even though you are still in the hiring phase. In addition, this will help give them a grasp of the tasks and responsibilities they will be handling for you if and when they are hired.

Asking the candidates to take skills assessments and examinations is helpful in evaluating their technical skills. There are many online assessment tools, applications, and software, such as HackerRank, Techgig, and Interview Mocha that you can utilize to improve the quality of your hiring process.

**Contact the Candidate’s References **

One of the most common mistakes of recruiters is they disregard the importance of the applicant’s references. Contacting the persons they indicated on their resumes should be significant to you if you want to verify the information your applicant wrote on their resume and application documents. It will not take you long hours to send emails or even call these individuals personally. Moreover, it should also help you study about your potential employee’s information such as their performance from their previous job, their work habits, their discipline, and many other tangible and intangible factors.

The President of Career Strategies, Priscilla Claman, emphasizes the significance of checking references in an article she published in the HBR Guide to Getting the Right Job. She believes that an employer may feel that they are right at most 90% of the time. Although 90% is already an impressive percentage, the 10% should never be overlooked. In other words, while relying on a hunch is not an illegal source for making decisions, hard information should still always be considered. Let us say that you find the candidate’s qualifications and credentials impressive, which is subjective to your feelings and is therefore only a hunch, you still will never know whether the candidate is a good fit for the job or to your company in general. It is important therefore to decide on credible information, and a good deal of that can be obtained from the candidate’s indicated references.

Claudio Fernandes-Araoz, the person behind “It’s Not the How or the What but the Who: Succeed by the Surrounding Yourself with the Best”, supports Claman’s claim saying that “relevant external observes are the right people to give an accurate assessment of whether the candidate can perform under the specific circumstances and challenges”.

**Consider the Needs of your Business **

Re-evaluating your company’s culture is vital when choosing the people you want to work with. Before you start putting up your business or building your company, you should have already envisioned how you want your business to grow in the next months, years, and even decades. In this regard, you must consider the needs of your company before hiring your employees as this will save you time and a lot of money. You sure don’t want to hire topnotch candidates and fire them a month after because they don’t share the same goals as you.

Kate Heinz (2019), in her write-up “Why is Organizational Culture Important”, defined company culture as the “goals, values, ideals, and attitudes that describe an organization.” It is necessary for employers to enforce a winning company culture as this dictates how their business will operate, and characterizes the identity of your company which encloses their people. She also mentioned that a sense of strong culture can also help recruiters attract top-notch candidates and retain talents. A strong company culture, according to her, is key in scaling up the levels of employee engagement, and could even boost their productivity and performance.

Having a good company culture helps you attract the best employees for your business. During interviews, it is also vital that you let candidates grasp and have a view of your company culture. It will help them decide whether they fit in with your company culture or not.

Post a Well-Written Job Description

The hiring process will always start with a job description. A well-written and detailed job post will help you entice more candidates, which means you should have better chances of hiring the employees who fit best to your vacant positions. See it as a way to clearly communicate to prospective applicants what they are supposed to do once hired.

According to Wright State University, a job description is not limited to the position’s responsibilities, rather, it sets the foundation for recruiting and optimum work performance. Commonly, a job description is composed of six (6) parts. It includes the following:

1. Job Title, which contains a 1 to 4-word brief description on the scope of the position (e.g., Content Writer, SEO Specialist, Budget Analyst, Instructional Designer, Manager Custodial Services, etc.);
2. Job Purpose, which serves as the overview of the role and scope of responsibilities;
3. Job Duties and Responsibilities, which contains the description of the duties and responsibilities assigned to the role;
4. Required Qualification, which provides the list of the level of job knowledge (e.g., abilities, educational attainment, relevant work experience, skills, etc.);
5. Preferred Qualifications, which refers to the qualifications that are “nice to have” but not necessary; and
6. Working conditions, including the physical demands.

Crafting a job description that is comprehensive but at the same time concise and precise with the salient information should not only help you attract talents, it should help you hire topnotch prospective employees that should fit well into your culture.

(READ: How to Attract Talent to your Job Offering)

Conduct Comprehensive Interviews

An interview is one of the foundations of recruitment. It gives you the chance to get to know your candidates better, and at the same time introduce your company and how it operates to them. Comprehensive interviews should not only be a “getting to know” stage. It is an opportunity for you to hire your next best employee who will help your company become known in the market. For the longest time, Human Resource experts worldwide recommend that you, as employer, create a detailed evaluation form to assess and compare the performance of each applicant based on the given criteria. Aside from this, the use of behavioral-based interview techniques should also be beneficial.

According to The Balance Careers, behavioral-based interviewing is an approach to interviewing that is focused on eliciting information on how the interviewee behaves in certain employment- related events. The logic is that your past behavior will predict your future behavior.

In a more traditional way of interviewing, the interviewee is asked a set of questions that may be answered in a straightforward manner. It includes questions like “What are your strengths and weaknesses?”, “How do you handle pressure?”, “Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?”, “How do you know when you are at your best?”, among others. In a behavioral interview, however, the recruiter or employer will ask questions to find out whether the interviewee embodies the attitude, skills, and characters they are looking for. For instance, you could ask questions like “What are you going to do if our company failed to meet your expectations?”, “How are you going to motivate and encourage your team members to reach your goal?”, and the like.

In summary, as an employer, you should always keep in mind that recruiting requires effort. You do not ask questions only for the sake of asking, rather, you ask questions because you want to know, learn, and assess. Hiring the best employees in your business will exhaust you in many ways, so try to find solace in the value these employees may bring to your company in a few years.