Successful hiring should accomplish two important tasks at once: closing a specific vacancy and making your company stronger. It’s vital that the time and effort spent should pay off in full. For this, as an HR expert or business owner, you need not only intuition but also accurate methods of evaluating candidates.
How to Find the Right One
Proper candidate assessment is impossible without answering the following three basic questions in advance:
- Is the person interested in the success of your venture?
- How does he or she communicate with various people, regardless of their position or social status?
- What are the candidate’s career and professional goals?
Ideally, each new employee should bring something new to the company culture and create a positive dynamic for the entity. Here are a few reasons why it’s essential to pay attention not only to the professional skills and competencies of the candidate:
- It’s the cultural fit that directly determines whether the new employee will align with the values of the team;
- It’s a way to not only hire an employee but also fill a specific role in the company;
- Finding the right balance between new ideas and accepted cultural values in the company is crucial.
That said, cultural homogeneity and strict alignment with company values should not become a barrier to new ideas or ways of thinking.
Matching the Candidate to Company Goals
In order to properly compile a comprehensive list of requirements for candidates and, afterward, job descriptions, the first thing to do is to define the new employee’s role in the organization. Therefore, you need to ensure that applicants clearly fit your key business performance goals.
To do this, you want to follow these next principles:
- Identify a precise list of key professional and other skills, competencies, knowledge, and abilities that the candidate must possess in order to successfully perform his or her duties;
- Outline what behavioral competencies are required for the candidate for a particular position or role;
- The candidate’s skills and competencies must be immediately applicable to achieve relevant (in the upcoming years) business goals or to complete a specific current project.
As a result, you will not only get a detailed list of the qualities needed for the candidate but also sort out unimportant conditions.
Preparation for Recruitment
Before posting a job opening for a particular position, your company manager, along with an HR expert, should make thorough preparations. To avoid getting the “wrong” employee, who you will be forced to fire due to critical mistakes or who will decide to resign independently, you want to think through a recruiting roadmap. Meaning a specific plan for your organization that you will use to find and hire new candidates.
Evaluate Your Company’s Corporate Culture
To properly determine if a candidate fits your company’s values, determine the principles of your corporate culture. This will result in a list of the following important terms and aspects:
- Identify the values and global mission of your company. If they already exist, it’s worth understanding how well they align with your business’s current goals;
- Determine which qualities and thinking styles the future worker should have to best meet the company’s goals;
- If you are looking for a manager or executive candidate, determine what skills, qualities, and additional competencies they should have. It’s crucial to understand in advance whether the candidate’s management style will fit into your corporate culture, as it will, among other things, affect productivity;
- Whether the person is process-oriented or results-oriented.
Once done, evaluate all candidates for the position against the abovementioned criteria.
Create Job Description
Next, if it’s a new position, based on the list of skills and competencies, you will also need to create a job description that will contain the following points:
- The name of the vacancy;
- Short description of the company;
- Requirements for the candidate;
- Job duties;
- Working principles;
- The reason for the vacancy;
- Working conditions.
Also, don’t forget to include a call to action (CTA) in the text of the vacancy. For example, it may look like this: “Visit our office to learn more about the position” or “Call now to learn more before applying.”
Tips for writing a vacancy announcement:
- Maximum specifics that you think will be of interest to candidates;
- Use simple words without any officiousness;
- Think through in advance the answers to any questions the candidate may have;
- Include as many advantages of the company as possible.
If the conditions for posting a vacancy on the website allow it, you can also visualize your job description via photos or videos that will give an idea of the team.
Interview Preparation
The next step is to prepare for the interview with the candidate. This requires:
- Drawing up the structure of the interview with the candidate;
- Preparation of an evaluation card is needed to compare candidates according to the parameters outlined in such a card.
To conduct an interview, it’s important to use techniques by which your HR expert will be able to get acquainted with the candidate in detail and determine his or her thinking style. For this purpose, make sure that you:
- Avoid trivial questions. They are easy to prepare for, which means it will be challenging for you to know the candidate’s style of thinking and motivation to work;
- Create an environment in which the candidate can demonstrate personality features.
Also, when making a list of questions, you can ask for help from employees who will have to work with the new candidate, including an immediate manager.
Be sure to ask the opinion of those of your colleagues who will be constantly and directly interacting with the new employee.
How to Evaluate the Candidate’s Capabilities
An interview is an important step, but it’s not the only way to get to know your candidates in detail. There are other methods that can be used for this, including:
- Guide your new candidate on a tour of a new workspace and provide other hands-on experience, e.g., interactive tutorials, case studies, and customer feedback. This method has several advantages, as the candidate has an opportunity to learn more about the company. Plus, you can find out how he or she communicates with different people, as well as whether there’s a high level of motivation and interest in the company’s work;
- After the interview, invite the candidate to lunch with future colleagues. This will also give a lot of information about the communication style of the person, for example, whether he or she treats all people with respect and friendliness (e.g., waiters in the restaurant);
- Ask your co-workers for help and find out their opinion of the potential employee. Clarify if the applicant communicates with the interviewer or the future manager just as politely and kindly as with other people in the office.
All of the above-mentioned methods can help assess not only the professional skills and competencies but also the personal qualities of the candidate. Also, to test your candidate’s skills and competencies in reality, invite the applicant to a project. This method has advantages over traditional test assignments.
Conclusions
Not only the professional level of the candidate is essential but also how this person fits in with the mission and goals of your company. Additionally, if it’s a new job opening, you need to do more than just draft a description; determine in advance what the perspective of this role in your organization will be in 5 to 10 years.
Successful recruitment of an employee for any position should be preceded by comprehensive training. For this, make a list of requirements, job description, and list of questions for the interview. An HR expert and company management need to choose the right approach to find out the professional skills, personal qualities, and competencies of the candidate.
