11 Ways To Ensure You Hire The Best Candidate

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Hiring the candidate is the most important thing that a hiring manager can do. It takes creativity and diligence to find the right person for the job. While it may seem easy to look over a resume and check their qualifications and call it a day, it’s not as simple as it looks.

There is always the possibility that you will end hiring the wrong person, which can trigger a whole series of negative consequences. The wrong person can turn out to be lazy and unmotivated, unqualified, or they can influence the atmosphere in the workplace.

An impressive list of qualifications and extensive work experience are certainly necessary, but these are not the only things you should factor in when recruiting potential employees. Making sure that they are also in tune with the culture of your organization and its goals is also crucial.

Key Takeaways:

• Creating a compelling job description which includes daily responsibilities and qualifications needed can help narrow down the best candidates.

• Make sure you consider the company culture and find someone who fits it.

• Keep improving and updating your hiring process until it works best for your company.

• Testing your candidates can help you determine who is the most skilled and qualified and who might have exaggerated on their resume.

11 Ways To Ensure You Hire The Right Candidate

1. Treat candidates like customers. A candidates first impression of a company is crucial. Just like you, they are trying to find the best company that fits their needs. Making them feel as if you are just as excited about getting to know them as they are, can be the difference between getting an enthusiastic candidate over someone not really interested.

   When treating candidate like customers, you should be respectful of their time. Make sure to show up on time for meetings, and let them know if you are going to be late for any reason. When they show up for the interview make sure they feel welcomed and comfortable.

2. Create a compelling job description. Make sure you make the tile of the job description as specific as possible. This will help narrow down the best candidates for the position and eliminate any confusion. Include the job responsibilities, skills, and qualifications needed for the position. Doing this helps candidates determine if they are right for the position before they apply, leaving the best candidates for you to go over later on.

3. Look for a career-oriented person. You want an employee who is going to be loyal to the company, and who will view your job as an opportunity to advance their career and be an asset to the company at the same time. If their job history is checkered, you should proceed to look at other candidates.

   If you have a candidate who is trying to juggle multiple careers, or who has been quick to jump ship and work for several companies in the past without decent tenure, then maybe you shouldn’t hire them.

4. Focus on practical experience. Ideally, you should hire a candidate who is both qualified and experienced in your line of work. However, more often than not, you will not come across a perfect candidate. Focusing on the practical experience of your potential employee is key because they will be able to integrate themselves more quickly and become familiar with the job.

   You also save time and money when it comes to their training. If a candidate doesn’t have the required practical experience you are looking for, they will need more time to fit in and learn all the nuances of the job. Of course, every new employee needs to go through an adjustment period, but you want to keep that period as short as possible.

5. Don’t hyper-focus on their past. While it’s important to go over a candidates past, don’t only focus on that. If their resume looks like they are job hopping, ask them about it. There could be a valid reason as to why they have two or three jobs within the last year.

   Ask the candidates open ended questions that are relevant to the position and see how they answer. This will help you hire for their potential future instead of focusing solely on their past.

6. Test your candidates. One of the ways you can improve your recruitment process would be to implement various methodologies that can provide you with a much clearer picture as far as learning abilities and analytical skills of the candidate are concerned. It goes deeper than looking at a person’s resume and making a decision based on that alone.

   Even if their resume is impressive, and they come off as confident during the interview, it is up to you as an employer to test potential employees, because they might not have been completely truthful on their resume. Also, you will gain a better insight into how resourceful they are when presented with a new challenge.

7. Determine strengths needed for the position. Let’s face it, most jobs nowadays are stressful to a certain extent. If you run an IT company, for instance, you should also look for candidates who, in addition to their qualifications, have the necessary mental and psychological strength to cope with pressure, tight deadlines, and complex client demands.

   If you are hiring someone to do a job which is repetitive in its nature, you will need to determine whether the candidate will need to be able to stay motivated, even if they are required to perform the same actions over and over again. If an employee is going to burn out quickly under stress, despite having a brilliant CV, then they are probably not a good fit for the job.

8. Consider company culture fit. Another important thing to consider when hiring a candidate is their ability to fit in and adapt to your company’s culture. This means their social skills need to be developed enough, so they don’t disrupt the positive atmosphere in the office. Ideally, they should only add to it. Since nearly every job involves working with other people, as well as communicating with clients, you’re going to want to hire a person with strong social skills.

   Check their work history and through your interview questions make sure they aren’t prone to conflicts in the workplace. Then if possible, find out how they got along with their former colleagues and bosses when you conduct reference checks. That should help you paint a complete picture of every candidate you interview.

9. Check social media. While it pays to get to know your potential employee as a person, asking personal question is not the best solution, because they may feel uncomfortable (not to mention the fact that it may be deemed as anti-discriminatory). However, what you can do is check out their social media presence across all major platforms.

   Visiting someone’s Facebook or Instagram page will help you learn more about the candidate, and their LinkedIn profile may offer a better insight into their skills and experience than their resume. In addition to that, LinkedIn can also be a great place to find new employees, and invite them for a job interview.

10. Consider bringing on an intern. Depending on the size of your company, you may want to engage an intern as an interim solution. This is one of the best ways to find the best candidate for the job. After monitoring their progress, you will know everything about them: their intelligence, skills, ability to cope with stress, social skills, and weaknesses. In fact, you will get to know them much better than any candidates you just interview.

    And if you do decide to hire interns, don’t just have them run errands for you. Give them some actual work, so that you can gauge their abilities and prepare them for actual work, in case you decide to hire them. Plus, you will save plenty of time by hiring someone you already have in your company, instead of going through an extensive hiring process.

11. Pay attention to the questions they ask. Their answers to your questions are important, but the questions they ask are sometimes more important. The type of questions that they ask show how prepared they are and their engagement with the role. If you notice they are asking a lot of questions about how the role works, they may not be the best person for the job.

    Look for candidates that are asking about specific things that showed they did their research. The best candidates are the ones who want to move the company forward and wanting to know more about who they will be working with.

Benefits of Hiring the Right Candidate

New hires can be a big influence on the productivity and efficiency of your company. Here are some reasons why hiring the right candidate is essential to your company:

• Saves time and resources. Hiring the right candidate can save you the time and resources of needing to go through the recruitment process multiple times. Making sure you have the most qualified candidate means saving time and money needing to train the person. The most they should need is getting an understanding of the how the company operates and policies.

• Decreases the workload of current employees. Hiring the right candidate means decreasing the workload of other employees. Hiring candidates with the skills and qualifications that are missing with the current employees can help in areas that are needed. When everyone on the teams has different areas where they succeed means that everyone can focus on their specialties meaning less stress for everyone.

• Brings in new ideas. New employees are great for bringing in new ideas to help improve the company. Hiring the right person means getting fresh ideas that current employees might not have. This could be from how a different company operated, or they could be a recent college graduate with new ideas from there. Innovation prevents the workplace from becoming stagnant and helps boost productivity and morale.

Tips for Hiring the Right Candidate

• Keep improving your hiring process. Potential candidates are not the only thing you should focus on if you want to hire the best person for the job. You need to work on your recruitment process and make constant changes and tweaks to it until you get it right. For instance, some companies have their recruiters asking magic bullet questions, whose purpose is to catch the candidates off guard and test their analytical skills.

  A more efficient method would be to focus on obtaining relevant information about your potential employees, such as their qualifications, knowledge, experience, social skills, as well as their ability to learn and develop. Also, it is up to you to attract the right candidates by making all of the job requirements as clear as possible. Another good idea would be to get other people involved in the hiring process.

• Conduct multiple interviews. Once you think you have a few candidate, set up multiple interviews for each. This can help you make an educated decision on which candidate is the right one. It can be hard to determine the right person after meeting with them for an hour.

  On the first round of interviews, have the candidate meet with the hiring manager and someone from human resources. At the second interview, have them meet with their direct supervisor. If you decide to do a third interview, have the candidate meet with the owner or president of the company. Having all these people with the candidate can help narrow down the best person for the job.

• Trust your instincts. It’s important to trust your instincts. Making the logical decision is important but sometimes going with a gut feeling and give you the best candidate. You can ask all the right questions and they can give all the right answers, but your gut feeling can tell you if they are right or not.

• Take your time. You may be eager to fill a role, but sometimes it can take time to find the right person. Hiring someone quickly increases the likelihood that you will end up with someone who isn’t a great fit.

  Taking your time with the hiring process also shows your current employees that you value them and care about them. They are the ones who will most likely working directly with this new person, so making sure they are the right fit is important.

Author

Taylor Berman

Taylor is a freelance writer from Pennsylvania. Taylor got into writing because she enjoys writing articles that help people and loves creating stories that inspire. She earned a bachelor's degree in journalism and public relations with an interest in communications media from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.