Building a team and recruiting new employers might seem like an easy task. In practice, you just need to post a job, conduct the recruitment process and choose the best candidates. However, if you work as a hiring manager, you know how hard it can be to choose the right candidates among all the applications you receive.
Choosing the right candidate goes beyond who had the highest score at college or who has more years of experience. Even though those things are important and should be taken into consideration in the decision process, most of the time they are not the key points when choosing someone to join your company. Things like motivation, cultural fit and even looking for specific personality traits can be a great way to make sure that you hire the best candidates that will successfully make your company grow.
There is no right or wrong strategy you should follow when conducting a recruiting process. Each job will have its own personalized requirements and each candidate will have their own personal traits. Nevertheless, there are a few things you should be doing to optimize your hiring decisions and make sure you only hire top talent to add value to your company.
1. Use a Personality Test in your hiring process
Interviews are one of the best ways of getting to know your candidates on a more personal level and beyond what is written on their CV. However, there are some personality traits that remain hard to identify by only talking with someone. When using a personality test, you have the chance to discover some of your candidate’s best characteristics, while also revealing some unpleasant traits that are sometimes more difficult to understand through an interview.
2. Value Soft Skills over Hard Skills
Hard skills and technical knowledge remain, nowadays, some of the important assets to take into account when hiring someone. You want to make sure that the person you hire is capable of performing the tasks that they will be responsible for. However, soft skills should not be overlooked in detriment of hard skills. While technical skills can be learned, other important things like motivation and determination cannot be taught or learned, as they are traits that increasingly connect with a person’s personality and should be taken into special account when hiring someone.
3. Implement Company Referral Programs
Allowing your employees to refer someone they know can be a guarantee that you are attracting the right talent to your company, as they are being referred by someone of your trust. It’s also a great way to attract passive candidates that otherwise wouldn’t be aware of the position. Furthermore, a referred candidate is usually more aware of a company's culture and goals, leaving you more at ease when wondering if they will be a good fit.
4. Increase your Hiring Speed
As you may know, top talent doesn’t stay long in the market, as they have their options open regarding offers from several companies. Speeding up your hiring process is not always easy, but will give you an advantage over other companies and improve your chances to hire the best candidates. A great way to speed up your hiring process is to implement an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) in your process. This innovative tool will allow you to filter through applicants more easily, giving you time to analyse and interact with the best candidates in a more personalized way.
5. Build Your Own Internal Talent Pool
During recruitment processes, you probably often find yourself torn between two or more talented candidates when you only have one position to fill. Letting go of skilled candidates can be hard, especially when you know they would be a good addition to your company. However, this doesn’t mean you are losing them forever. You can still keep them in your database for future opportunities, allowing you to create your own internal talent pool. This will make it easier for you to hire the best talent in future opportunities, as you will already have contact with them, saving you time, money and assuring you that you make the best hiring decision.
Hiring the right people for your company is one of the best things you can do to assure its long term success. By implementing these strategies, you will improve your chances of building a team that is well aligned with your company culture and that will stick with you for a longer period of time.
Skeeled offers you the perfect opportunity to bring innovation and digitalisation to your hiring. Check our website or our LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook pages for further information.
Thanks for reading and see you next time!
Your team here at skeeled
