Bringing in new staff is always a difficult process. Not only do you need to find someone who has the right skills and qualifications, but it’s just as important to find somebody who has the right personality fit for the company too. Hiring can be time consuming, but you can make the process easier with the right recruitment plan. 

Set Out The Job Role

You can’t hire someone until you know exactly what you want them to do. The requirements may have changed since you last filled this position, so go over the job role carefully.

• What with the main duties be?
• Are there any changes you want to make to those responsibilities?

Use the job role to create a person specification. Make a list of what qualifications the candidates should have.

• What skills will they need?
• What sort of personality would fit with the team they will be working with? 

Plan Your Recruitment Process

Decide early on who you’re going to go about the interview process.

• Will there be several stages of interview?

• Do you need to administer some kind of test, for example, to check an ability to code? 

Decide who will conduct each stage of the interview.

• Will you start with a phone interview or early stage interview by HR?

• For later stages, will you bring in the line manager or anyone from another department to sit in? 

Review Applications Thoroughly

Before interviewing anyone, spend some time going over the applications, comparing them against the job role and the personal specification you laid out earlier. Look for those key qualifications and skills you identified, and see what you can tell about personality.

Pre-Screen Candidates

Having a few stages of interview is a good way to find the best candidate for the job. Once you’ve found some applications you like the look of, you can begin pre-screening for the main interview stage, saving them and you too. You can also use this stage to check skills and find out about salary expectations. 

You could pre-screen with a work personality test, to get a feel for whether or not the candidate will fit with your company culture and the team they will be working with.

You could also have someone from HR conduct a preliminary interview for the phone. They can get a feel for personality, and double check details about relevant experience and skills. 

Ask The Right Questions

Asking the right questions is very important. By the time someone reaches you in the main interview, you should have a pretty solid idea of the qualifications that they have. Instead, ask them questions that tell you something about how they will handle the role.

You already know they can build a website, for example, but how would they respond to a tight deadline or a client making a lot of changes?

Use the interview to put their resume into a real-world context, and get a better idea of the kind of person they are. 

© New To HR