Is your small business hiring its first employees? Or are you trying to improve your company’s less-than-ideal record in hiring speed? Whatever the case, here are 7 hiring tips that will help your small business hiring quickly, efficiently, and effectively.
Contents
1. Write a Great Job Listing
The first step you need to make in the hiring process is to write a job listing. It’s important that you write a great job listing if you’re going to target the best possible job candidates. What exactly constitutes a good job listing? Here are some tips:
- Be accurate: Be honest about the duties that the job entails—if you falsify or exaggerate job responsibilities, then your new hires will probably be disappointed and not want to stay with the company, which is a major waste of time and money
- Establish minimum qualifications: Don’t be afraid to set minimum qualifications for the job—you know what skills your employee must have, so state them on the job listing and keep underqualified people from applying
Don’t be afraid to use energetic and excitable language to make your job listing more appealing!
2. Use Digital Tools
There are all sorts of hiring tools that can help make the hiring process more efficient and stress-free. Definitely take advantage of an online job board. Online job boards can expose your job listing to thousands of qualified candidates. Plus, most of these sites have tools that will automatically sift through applications and find the best resumes for you to review. You’re able to use keywords to find employees with certain qualifications (like an MBA or a minimum number of years working in a certain industry).
3. Conduct Phone Interviews
Before you run in-person interviews, you might consider doing phone interviews, first. During the hiring process, you will undoubtedly discover applicants who just aren’t fit for your company after only a few minutes speaking with them. Don’t waste your time or the applicant’s by scheduling interviews with these candidates—time is money, after all. A phone interview will help you find the job candidates who are truly worth inviting for an in-person interview.
There are other ways you can do distance interviews too. You can also do a video interview, which may be helpful because you’ll get to see the candidate’s face. Just be sure that you have a quality webcam and high-speed internet, or else there might be visual hiccups.
4. Conduct Group Interviews
A group interview might be the right kind of hiring process for your business. If you’re going to be hiring sales people or any position that requires an energetic and outgoing personality, then a group interview may be ideal because it will show which candidates have the liveliest personalities.
Just be aware that group interviews are not always the best practice for your business, and they’re certainly not a good way to get through many interviews at once. Remember that just because someone is quiet, doesn’t mean that they’re unqualified. Only use this hiring method when you’re hiring for very social roles.
5. Run Auditions
An audition is one of the most effective hiring methods when you’re hiring for a position that requires a very specialized skillset. It has nothing to do with singing or dancing auditions—although it very well might if you’re going to be hiring a performer. An audition is just when you ask a job candidate to perform a certain task that they’d be required to do if given the position. They’ll give you a sample work that you’ll evaluate.
What’s great about auditioning someone is that you’ll cut past all of the flowery talking points on a resume and get to see a job candidate’s skills in action.
6. Run Background Checks
Background checks are an important way to keep your workplace safe. They’ll reveal very important information about a job candidate, like if your job candidate has a criminal record or if your candidate has any kind of record that might indicate their unsuitability for the job (read this blog on what is an MVR check to see why these other records matter for some businesses).
7. Outside Interests Matter
Last, but not least, always ask your job candidates about their outside interests. What do they do for fun? What activities do they like? These kinds of questions will help you gauge whether or not they’ll be a fit for your company culture, and whether they’re truly passionate enough about the role to give it their best effort.
When you heed these 7 tips, you’re bound to hire great new employees for your company.
