Top tips when recruiting new staff

So, you’ve decided to recruit some new employees. The first thing you have to think about is your recruitment strategy or hiring plan.  

Questions you should be answering in your hiring plan include; what is your budget? what are your targets? and how will you onboard and retain your new hires?  

The next step is writing out a job description and person specification. It’s good practice here to include as much information as possible so that the candidate has a good idea of the company and the role that is being advertised.  

Once you’ve got a job advert prepared, you’re now ready to start marketing your vacancy on all the major job boards and industry-specific platforms.  

You might also want to consider the option of employee referrals as your current staff will have a strong idea of what sort of person the business requires.  

After you’ve garnered enough applications to your job opening, the next step in the process is narrowing it down to a handful of candidates for interview and assessment. At this stage, it’s really about prioritising the candidate experience and making a good first impression.  

If you want someone to come and work for your business, you need to make sure that you communicate your company culture and values at the outset, as this will set the tone for all future interactions.  

This is important because a recent Glassdoor survey found that 73% of jobseekers will only apply to a company if it has similar values to them.  

Throughout the recruitment process, you should also be making use of technology and digital tools to improve efficiency, save time and speak to candidates.  

Conducting video interviews, for example, is one sure fire way to get a really good understanding of whether a candidate is suitable for the role and will save time if they are not.  

Other things you can think about include collaborative hiring – where you bring in multiple stakeholders to the hiring process – and using a scoring matrix – where you score candidates based on pre-determined criteria to help you make a selection. 

One of the things that can really turbo-charge your recruitment campaign is adopting best practice.  

That starts with getting back to anyone who has shown an interest in the vacancy even if they’re not quite the right fit.  

As a hiring manager, you will undoubtedly have to turn down more candidates than you recruit, so it’s about having that conversation in a professional manner and practicing compassion.  

This is important because the most important aspect of successful recruitment is building relationships. 

If you have a ready-made network of jobseekers that you can turn to when you have a vacancy, it will be a lot easier to find the right candidate.  

Keeping an open mind and planning ahead are also good practices to adopt as you never know when an opportunity might open up for a candidate that you’ve previously decided wasn’t the right fit.  

Additionally, you should endeavour to be a good listener when speaking with candidates because the more you listen, the more you will find out about them and be able to make an informed decision.  

To make your business look attractive to potential employees, you must have a strong employer brand.  

This involves defining what your business stands for and what your employees can expect from a cultural point of view.  

You should leverage all of the digital tools available to develop your employer brand and social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter to build brand advocacy and get your business out there.  

This doesn’t happen overnight but is rather the result of consistent communications backed up by an engaged employee base and a track record of practising what you preach.    

In terms of things to avoid, a badly written job description and advert is probably top of the list.  

If you don’t write an accurate description of what the job entails and what skills are required, you are not going to get the candidates you are looking for.  

Making sure that you job adverts are free of unconscious bias is also incredibly important. Using gender, sexuality and ethnicity-neutral language helps avoid discrimination in the hiring process.  

Another example of poor practice if failing to look at internal candidates to fill your vacancy. Is there someone within the business who could step up or step into a new function? This is a question you should be asking.  

It’s also a poor practice if you are using outdated interview practices where you never get a true picture of the candidate’s personality.  

Using a scoring matrix with pre-agreed questions can help mitigate this but providing interview training to hiring managers could also help.  

If you’re unsure whether or not you are adopting best practice or perhaps more importantly, avoiding poor practice, you should refresh your knowledge on the legal aspects of recruitment.  

Check out this article by Acas on the fundamentals of discrimination law and your responsibilities as an employer to your candidates.  

There are a number of support programmes available in England, Scotland and Wales that provide more advice on recruitment if you’re making your first hire or are fairly new to the process.  

In England, you can find advice and support from Jobcentre Plus.  

In Scotland, the Employer Recruitment Incentive Framework is an important resource.

In Wales, you can get help from the Skills Gateway for Business.