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It’s only natural to want to staff your business with the best possible candidates for each position. However, as any seasoned hiring manager can tell you, pairing ideal applicants with the right jobs isn’t nearly as simple as it sounds. Not only are some applicants less-than-honest when applying and interviewing for jobs, many businesses make things worse by neglecting to properly screen out the best candidates. Businesses in the market for top talent can benefit from putting the following pointers to good use.
Be Mindful When Creating Job Listings
When businesses post job listings that are vague and/or poorly written, scores of unqualified candidates are likely to apply. If a listing you’ve created fails to cogently outline job duties, expectations and qualifications, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself for the ensuing flood of applications you’ll receive. To help ensure that unqualified or overqualified candidates don’t waste time responding to job listings, be as thorough as possible when writing them. Post these opportunities on specialized job boards. Ensure that you utilize exciting language to stand out on job posting boards. Each listing you post should clearly define what the job entails, as well as the desired qualifications. When crafting practical job listings, take care to leave no room for ambiguity. Just remember – the less effort you put into your listings, the more time you’ll spend sifting through applications from candidates who should never have applied in the first place.
Thoroughly Screen Applicants
Failure to thoroughly screen applicants is liable to result in candidates being placed in roles they have no business holding. Depending on the role, this can have far-reaching consequences for your enterprise. Fortunately, a robust screening process can effectively weed out unqualified applicants early on in the recruitment phase. Since thorough screening takes a fair amount of time, many business owners opt to play it by ear and hire applicants they have a good feeling about. However, it’s important to keep in mind that presenting oneself well during an interview does not qualify one for a job. While being able to ace an interview is a talent unto itself, the quality of an interview is but one part of the hiring process. Checking an applicant’s background, qualifications and education history will help prevent you from staffing a key role with an unqualified or dishonest candidate. Businesses looking to expedite this process should invest in high-quality screening solutions and convenient customizable workflows.
Don’t Make Experience A Determinant Factor For Every Role
When you are looking for employees to find candidates that fit the team, do not only focus on experience. There’s no denying that experience is an enviable quality to have when applying for a job in any field. In fact, being in possession of copious experience is liable to place you toward the top of any callback list. Still, as important as experience is, it shouldn’t be a determinant factor in every position for which you’re recruiting. While certain roles require ample experience, others can comfortably be filled with talented applicants who possess little to no professional experience.
Just because an applicant is experienced doesn’t mean they have a good work ethic or are particularly passionate about what they do, and if you limit yourself to hiring only the most experienced applicants, you’re liable to miss out on some fresh talent. As any experienced entrepreneur can confirm, potential is oftentimes every bit as important as experience.
Be Open To Trial Periods
Even if an applicant passes the screening process and aces the interview, it’s perfectly reasonable to want to see them in action before committing to bring them on full-time. With this in mind, consider requiring qualified candidates to undergo a trial period before extending an offer of full-time employment. Allowing new recruits to occupy their desired roles for a period of weeks or months before a larger commitment is made will provide them with invaluable hands-on experience and give you an opportunity to see what they’re truly capable of.
Consider The Culture Fit
When you are looking for the ideal candidate, you want to consider the culture fit. An ideal candidate must be able to quickly adapt to your company’s culture. They must have well-developed social skills, a strong personality, and consistently benefit your work environment. You want to find a candidate who will positively contribute your company culture. At the end of the day, you will be spending hours every week with your team members. This being said, it is essential to find an employee that is a strong addition to your culture.
Recruiting dishonest and/or unqualified applicants will do your business no favors. Placing people in roles for which they are ill-prepared or outright unqualified is practically guaranteed to have a negative impact on output, frustrate qualified team members and draw the ire of clients. Unfortunately, a shocking number of businesses accept applicants’ claims at face value and put screening on the backburner. While properly vetting candidates requires more time and effort than going with your gut, it can benefit your business tremendously, provide you with a highly competent workforce and pave the way for long-term success.
