8 WAYS TO ENSURE YOU HIRE THE RIGHT PERSON

Write and/or review the job description (JD) so it reflects the responsibilities and requirements of the role, including essential and desirable skills, qualifications and experience. If possible, work with the current job holder to do this as they will be able to provide you with useful insights into the role.

Use your new/updated JD to write your job ad. If there are essentials and desirables, such as qualifications or experience in a similar role, make sure this is clear on the ad. Your aim is to give prospective applicants a good idea of what to expect; they can then decide whether they are a good match. A carefully thought-out job ad also provides you the hiring manager, with a steer on what to look for.

Spend time going through the applications you receive. You may find it useful to have a checklist of essentials and desirables to refer to during this process. This list should help you remain consistent in your decisions to progress or reject applicants. As a hiring manager, you’ll know that screening is not always a cut-and-dried process, however; some applicants are a potential fit even when they don’t tick all the boxes.

Contacting applicants for a brief phone screen can help answer any questions you might have, especially if they don’t have all the essentials you have listed in your job ad. You might find just the person you are looking for. And if not, you’ve only spent 20 minutes on the phone as opposed to a lengthy, inperson interview.

There are many different interview styles and formats, and you may have a personal favourite. To increase the probability of finding the right person, consider structured interviews. This type of interview, where you ask every candidate the same set of questions, is considered to be consistent, effective and less open to bias. Combined with a rating system, structured interviews will help you assess each candidate, compare them and decide who is the best fit. You’ll want to base your questions on the responsibilities and requirements of the role, so dig out that job description again!

If possible, aim for at least two rounds of interviews for your role. For certain positions, especially more senior roles, you may want to schedule additional rounds. You may also find it useful to include assessment tools, such as personality and aptitude tests, during the selection process.

By involving more than one interviewer in the decision-making process, you increase the consistency, effectiveness and fairness of your process. The additional person could be a senior manager in another department or from HR. In this set-up, one interviewer could take the lead on questions, while the other makes notes and observations. Alternatively, you could involve a peer interviewer, i.e. one of the candidate’s future co-workers.

Once you’ve whittled down your candidate pool to the final few, you’re almost ready to extend a job offer. One final step before you do: reference checks. Aim to conduct two thorough reference checks per candidate, ideally with their most recent employer(s). Again, it’s a good idea to use a structured set of questions, some of which cover off the essentials and desirables for the role.