How to Recruit Employees: Choosing the Right Candidates
When you’re trying to figure out how much it costs when you lose an employee, you should calculate about 1/3 of their annual salary.
On average, it can cost you roughly $33,000 to lose an employee that’s worth $100,000. If you don’t know how to recruit employees to your organization who will stick around, you could be wasting tens of thousands of dollars every year.
Follow these 3 steps to make sure you’re always choosing the perfect candidates.
1. Validate the Resume
You need to look beyond your candidate’s resume when you’re thinking about hiring someone new. People are more than just the sum of their resume’s parts. It’s essential that you’re able to see what a candidate can do beyond the basic elements of their resume.
Don’t ask for yes or no questions. Ask the candidate to give you examples of when they faced a certain challenge or how they overcame a specific issue at work. The more details they can give you, the better. If they’ve never performed a certain task, ask them to give their best opinion on how they would address that issue. You want to know how they’ll perform the job for you and have an insight into their decision making. Never ask about personal questions about a candidate’s hobbies, interests or what they do after hours as it can bring on discriminatory claims. Keep all questions job related and professional.
Make sure your candidates have more than just a list of standard accomplishments. People can be trained to build a strong resume but great candidates have character.
2. Learn About Culture Fit
Whether you realize it or not, your office has a unique culture to it. Every company around the globe has its own particular culture. Finding people who can fit in means you have to know what you’re about.
Culture fit has become a kind of a buzzword in most HR departments around the world. While it might seem unimportant to think about who fits in and who doesn’t, cultural fit can actually make a big difference when you’re putting together a strong team. It has everything to do with productivity, employee longevity, and employee satisfaction.
Knowing who you are, what your mission statement is, and what direction you plan to take the company can help you determine which candidates can best fit in and which can’t. Just make sure to stay away from hiring too much of the same type employees (which tends to inhibit innovative and different ideas) or behavior that can seem discriminatory by excluding a certain group, including minorities and other protected groups.
3. Figure Out Which Piece of the Puzzle They Fit Into
You need to know intimately about the team you’re placing your candidate on. Closely look at everyone and get an understanding of which piece of the puzzle each of them fits into.
Each team member needs to fill a role and complement the other ones. In order to do that, you need to know what each member has to offer. Learning an employee’s competencies and skill sets are critical. Understand where they see themselves in 3, 5 or 10 years and watch as they develop their skill set to fit into different roles.
While leadership skills are a great asset to have, hiring a team full of leaders might be hard when it’s time to get people to follow. Everyone might be itching to lead at the same time and pull your team apart. Always look for a combination of natural leaders and followers to be worker bees. When it comes to promoting or hiring managers, look beyond talent and skill to perform the job itself. The employee must exhibit leadership, mentoring, and coaching skills that show how they would lead their team; not just be good at doing the job.
Learning How To Recruit Employees Takes Practice
Even if you’re sure that you know how to recruit employees, you could be making small but common mistakes that could cause you to hire the wrong employee. Be sure to scrutinize your process every step of the way so that you can hire those who will stick around for years to come.
It may be wise to outsource your HR services and obtain additional recruiting tips from professionals. From re-writing your job descriptions to writing more attractive ads to drafting the best interview questions, it may be well worth it to solicit the help of HR professionals with actual recruiting experience. Getting the right help in finding valuable employees will go a long way in helping your company build a cohesive working environment and structure.
If you’re looking for an HR consultant, contact us today for assistance for all your HR needs.
CA HR Services specializes in working with small and medium-sized companies to help develop legal, efficient and appropriate HR processes and procedures that meet state and federal labor law requirements.