While hiring employees may be a straightforward process, hiring talent isn’t. Yet, these are precisely the people you want to hire – individuals who will not simply work in your business, but who will take it to the next level.
How can you improve your hiring process, so you can increase your chance of attracting (and signing) top talents? Simply follow these 5 steps.
Step 1: Identify who you want to hire
Clearly define the individual that you want on your team. This means digging much deeper than just “Senior Accounts Executive”, “Project Manager” or “Digital Marketing Head”.
Identify every skill and competency that you’d like your new hire to have. Include technical skills, job knowledge and people skills. Think in detail about the type of experience this person should ideally have, as well as their personality and every other aspect of themselves – personally and professionally.
The clearer you are about the person you want to hire, the more likely it’ll be that you will actually attract them. Throughout the entire hiring process, keep referring back to your pre-determined criteria to ensure you’re only considering the most compatible candidates.
Step 2: Involve the team during interviews
It’s always a good idea to involve other members of the team during the interviewing stage. This way, you can gather varying perspectives on each candidate.
While some members of the team could initially feel that participating in multiple interviews may be a waste of time, you can win them over by letting them understand how important their professional opinions are – and how crucial it is to invest time upfront getting each hire right (rather than ending up with an incompatible team member who doesn’t contribute to the team).
Step 3: Do a social media check
It’s easy to make any resume look good, and while it may take a little more effort to make a good impression during interviews, it’s certainly doable. But how is this person in real life? There’s one way to find out – by taking a peek at their social media pages.
We understand that not everyone will have their social media pages set to “public” – or they may restrict their more embarrassing or divisive posts to “friends only”. But even so, at least you’ll know that your potential hire isn’t a loose cannon who berates their employer (or bosses) publicly on Facebook and Instagram.
Step 4: Streamline your application process
Surveys have shown that the best candidates can be off the market within ten days, and also, applications that can be completed in less than five minutes tend to attract more applicants.
Streamline your application process by having applicants upload their resumes and cover letters, and only answer relevant qualifying questions. Also, here’s a tip that employers often overlook – don’t ask candidates for information that can be easily found in resume and cover letter. Candidates with ample time on their hands probably won’t mind answering superfluous questions, but top talent may be turned off by poor hiring practices like this.
Step 5: Speak to a reputable talent acquisition agency
If you’re looking for the very best talents to give your business the edge, you’ll need talent acquisition experts sourcing for these individuals – then giving them excellent reasons to join your company (over your competition).
Few people do HR better than a professional HR consultancy. At Linktrix, we specialise in executive search and general staffing, and have over 500,000 candidates in our database who are actively looking for better career opportunities – one of them, could be the person you’re looking for. Speak with a consultant for a discussion on how we could be a part of your improved hiring process.
