The Hiring Process
“Kerrie focuses on identifying, recruiting, interviewing, selecting & referring the best candidates.”
The Hiring Process
A note from Kerrie, Director of Acquire Talent Consulting:
“Ah, yes. The recruitment process.
That process by which organisations find new employees. Sounds simple, right? Wrong! If it was simple, every organisation would do it and they would do it well. The fact of the matter is that they don’t.
That’s one of the many reasons Acquire Talent is engaged to help them.
Talented people are your company’s most valuable asset and, bottom line, your key to success. Before hiring an applicant for a job position, an organisation should go through a step-by-step process to find the most qualified candidate to fill the role.
Though a search can take time, a rushed hire can lead to additional staff turnover and missed opportunity costs. By investing in a thorough and detailed hiring process, I can assist you to identify the best talent in the market and help you make the right decisions and hiring talented professionals who will help your company grow.
One thing that you must remember is that the recruitment procedure involves actual recruiting. That’s because you want top-shelf, A-level candidates. These type of candidates need to be recruited. Why? Because they’re not actually looking for a job! They’re probably already being paid well and treated well by their current employer. However, recruiting passive candidates is NOT easy.
That’s why company’s outsource their recruitment procedure to Acquire Talent because we don’t just post a position to online job posting boards, sit back and wait for the applications to roll in. That’s not going to result in the sourcing and hiring of the best talent possible. It might result in the sourcing and hiring of the best candidates actively looking for a new job, but that’s not the same thing.
Acquire Talent focuses on identifying, recruiting, interviewing, selecting and referring the best candidates available in the marketplace….. regardless of whether they’re actively seeking new employment.
Read my top 10 recruitment process steps to ensure success below.”
Kerrie’s 10 Recruitment Process Steps to Ensure Success
01. Identifying the hiring need
We can’t find what you need . . . if you don’t know what you need. It’s not enough to know that you need [insert position title here]. You must also know the complete job description. However, you must know the description as the last employee who left in the position left it, NOT the description when that person took the job. That’s because chances are good that they took on new/additional responsibilities while in the position and /or your company requirements may have changed. Therefore the job that is NOW vacant is different from the job when they started.
02. Planning
Once you’ve identified exactly what you need (both in terms of hard skills and soft skills), then it’s time to put a plan together to find what you need. Make sure that you get the “buy in” of everybody involved with the hiring process on the steps that will be take and timeframes and start to block time out in diaries. There is nothing worse than finding the right candidate and you are too busy to interview for 3 weeks…
03. Searching
This is where you can take a break and leave the heavy lifting to Acquire Talent. We are “hunters” not “gatherers.” Too many companies are “gatherers,” thinking that superstar candidates are going to rain down from the sky – they are not. Once again, this is why companies Acquire Talent as we “hunt” for top talent not “gather”. Not only that, but we are exceptional at what we do. Even companies with internal recruiters cannot match the expertise and connections of a Consultant at Acquire Talent who works in the trenches day after day and has extensive networks.
04. Identifying viable candidates
Finding candidate is also not enough – they must be qualified. Anybody can find candidates. They’re everywhere. But those high-level A-players, the kind of candidates your competition would kill for; they are NOT everywhere. So searching for them, finding them, and identifying them will be more difficult if the first three steps in the process have not been undertaken – that’s why you need Acquire Talent.
05. Recruiting of A-level candidates
Once viable candidates have been identified, they must be recruited. In other words, they must be sold on not only the opportunity, but also on YOUR company. Some companies miss this important distinction. Top candidates are not just interested in a great new job. They’re interested in a great new job with a great new employer. If they like the job, but don’t like the employer, then they’re not going to take the job. You have one opportunity to hook a top candidate and you can’t mess it up.
06. (Telephone) screening
Sure, you have a batch of viable candidates, most likely passive candidates, who are interested in the position. But not every single one of themare going to make it through the process. That brings us to the first screening stage of the process, the telephone interview. Ideally, you would have a list of 10 very strong candidates, all of whom are interested in the position. The phone screening serves to whittle that list down, so that you can move to the next stage of the process, which is . . .
07. (Face-to-face) interviewing
There are two important aspects of this part of the recruitment process:
- It can’t stretch out too long, or candidates involved will lose interest.
- Acquire Talent will clearly communicate to candidates where they are in the process and what to expect in the near term or they will start looking elsewhere. This is a particular danger with topcandidates, since they are more than likely interviewing with more than one company.
08. Reference Checking
It is critical to conduct a minimum of 2 reference checks. This is a great opportunity tovalid the candidates skills, experience and culture fit. It can also be used to cover off any concerns that you may prior to making an offer
09. Offering of employment
The offer stage is one of the most delicate stages of the recruiting process. Acquire Talent will never take for granted that a candidate is going to accept an offer. We ensure that all of the properleg work leading up to this stage is handled with care and provided an exceptional candidate experience which in turn usually results in a positive outcome.
10. Onboarding of the candidate
What’s the point of hiring the best candidates in the marketplace if you can’t retain those candidates after you’ve hired them? A comprehensive onboarding process is perhaps the most crucial steps in the recruiting process. When we refer to onboarding, we’re talking about more than just new employee paperwork and knowing where the bathrooms are located. We’re talking about continuing to make the candidate/new employee feel wanted before they officially join the organization. Many a company has failed to do that, only to see their new employee never show up for their first day of work.