Human Resources Blog - Spark Hire
Why a Good Hiring Process Matters

Why a Good Hiring Process Matters

Hiring is an essential part of keeping a business moving forward, but for many managers the hiring process is also slightly overwhelming. It takes a significant amount of time and energy, plus there doesn’t always appear to be a proper method to the madness. If you’re looking to beef up your hiring process, ensuring that you’re only bringing top talent on board, consider these points:

Make it easy for people to apply

Ideally the people who are applying for your positions are already working in high-powered jobs in your field. Therefore, they don’t want to be jumping through hoops when they want to apply to your position. In order to encourage desirable talent to apply, you’ll need to make the process easy for them. Forms should be self-explanatory and available online.

Put pre-screening steps in place

Your time is valuable, and if you’re blocking out hours a day to speak to candidates who simply aren’t qualified, you’ll find that hiring quickly becomes a time suck. To prevent this from happening, you’ll want to put some pre-screening measures or hiring tests in place so that you’re only interviewing those who would truly be a good fit for the role that you have available. These requirements will vary based on your company, industry, and the open position, but setting some standards is necessary.

Create standard interview questions

Putting standard interview questions in place makes the process fair for all candidates, and it cuts down on aggravation for you. It’s much easier to compare candidates when everyone has answered the same questions. Now you’re comparing apples to apples instead of apples and oranges.

Don’t forget about references and background checks

A person’s references can help to paint a more 3D picture about what this individual is like as an employee. While it takes time to contact references, doing so helps to prevent you from making a hiring decision you’ll later regret.

Add in additional components to the interview

While having a discussion about the job with the candidate is important, don’t be afraid to get creative with how you interview. If the job has a lot of hands-on requirements, you might want to have candidates demonstrate their work during the interview. It’s easy for a person to talk about the job and what they’d do if they received an offer, but having potential hires actually show their work can help you to verify that they truly are a good fit.

Taking some time to review your company’s hiring process allows you to make necessary tweaks in order to improve it, making it more pleasant for candidates and for those doing the interviewing.

Image: Jakub Jirsak/BigStock.com

Lauren Levine

Lauren Levine is a copywriter/blogger who contributes to a number of magazines and websites including The Frisky, USA Today, and others. She also authors her own blog called Life with Lauren. She loves cooking, anything on the E! network, and is trying to convince herself that running isn't so bad.

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