If your customers are your businesses lifeblood, then your employees are its beating heart. Taking a ‘quality over quantity’ approach is key when hiring staff.
Of course what kind of employee you’re looking for will depend very much on the kind of person you are, the kind of people you work well with and the kind of business you’re running, but in all cases, it’s important to do your research, whether you’re managing the recruitment yourself or plan to partner with a specialist agency.
Don’t just jump at the first potential hires; take time to refine your recruitment and you’ll create an efficient and pleasant hiring process that should always lead to the right people for the right jobs.
With the right job ads in place, the right potential employees will always find you. Hiring managers should work on the job description first and foremost, making sure it provides specific information about the roles. However, don’t go overboard with information. Keep it to a few bullet points if possible and only include the requirements that are absolutely necessary, though also include a few points that are not required, but might be appreciated, as this could attract a more diverse range of hires.
Also, remember that you’re essentially selling your company here, so provide some compelling reasons why your company deserves the best employees. Finally, keep job titles simple and straightforward and keep the language inclusive and clear.
First, make sure you have a thorough list of everything you require in an employee (skill-sets and personalities) and make sure your applicants ‘tick every box’ before you take the process forward to interview. For the interview itself, meanwhile, structuring the process by preparing interview questions that are tied to the job requirements is always recommended.
It’s possible to ‘wing it’ and see where the interview takes you, particularly if you’re a smaller business looking to recruit less staff for less definitive roles. For medium to large-sized businesses, however, have your questions prepared and make sure you ask the same questions to each candidate.
If you’re struggling with the recruitment process, or would rather direct your time and resources elsewhere, there are plenty of options to consider. Companies like Leighton Taylor Consulting, for example, offer a specially tailored recruitment service that helps clients within the professional services sector source talent at every level.
Partnering with a specialist such as Leighton Taylor is arguably the most efficient and assured way to seek out the very best talent. They are very selective about who they represent and have links with not only the top job sites but various professional services websites. Simply tell them what role you’re looking to fill and they will create a job advert tailored to your exact specifications. This means you won’t even need to worry about getting the ad right.
Once a number of suitable candidates have been found, they will then use their unique insights to filter the wheat from the chaff and will only pass the best candidates on to you, effectively taking all of the laborious initial groundwork work out of the process.