If you want to grow your business you need to hire the right employees.
But do you have time to write the job description, post the job ad and conduct proper interviews in addition to your current schedule?
As we all know, the cost of hiring the wrong person can be devastating for a business. Because not only will a bad employee be unproductive, they could also damage relationships with your staff and customers.
Let me introduce myself. My name is Dieter Wentzel and I’m a Management Consultant and Human Resources expert with more than 20 years of professional experience. I have written this article to help business leaders develop an effective employee recruitment system so they can hire and retain highly productive employees.
But before we go any further, let’s take a moment to define what employee recruitment actually is.
What Is Employee Recruitment?
Employee recruitment is the process of hiring the right person, with the right skills and attitude, to work in a specific role in your organization.
The process typically involves these steps:
- Define the need for the role you want to hire for
- Write a job description
- Write a job ad and post it
- Assess the applicants and make a short list
- Conduct interviews
- Select a candidate and extend an offer
- Sign an employment contract
- Onboard the new employee with orientation and support
When you spend the right amount of time on each step of this process, then you increase your chances of success when it comes to hiring the right employee.
Now that we understand what employee recruitment is, you can keep reading below about my system to help you learn ‘How To Build An Effective Employee Recruitment System In 5 Steps.’
If you’d like to read our full definition of what Employee Recruitment is, then check out the Ask A Business Expert Dictionary by clicking on this link.
How To Build An Effective Employee Recruitment System In 5 Steps
Investing in a robust employee recruitment process will help you spend less time hiring people, which will allow you to spend more time building your business.
With that in mind, let me help you learn ‘How To Build An Effective Employee Recruitment System In 5 Steps.’
- Assess Your Current Employee Situation And Figure Out Why You Are Recruiting
- Map Out Your Employee Recruitment Process
- Complete Interviews With Tough Questions
- Onboarding For Success
- Get Help From A Human Resources Consultant
How To Build An Effective Employee Recruitment System In 5 Steps
Step 1: Assess Your Current Employee Situation And Figure Out Why You Are Recruiting
A poor hire can result in a lost opportunity, damaged relationships and your overall services could fall below the standards you have set.
That’s why we recommend assessing the following key factors before you get started.
- Need
- Time
- Budget
Need
Do you need to hire someone today? Or should you take a moment to consider the long-term perspective?
Reactive hiring may be necessary if you have short term requirements. But proactive hiring can be more effective. That’s why it’s worth spending time to map out the entire process, especially from an annual perspective.
For example, let’s say that a vacancy is coming up because an employee is retiring. If you start the recruitment process early, then this will also allow for some overlap between the outgoing employee and the new hire. This creates a ‘work share’ opportunity and will especially help the new employee to become more productive more quickly.
When you are assessing ‘need’ you may also want to consider how your business might change in the future, and how that will impact the job duties of the next person you will be hiring.
Time
Business leaders are busy. But if they don’t make time for the employee recruitment process, then your company might end up bringing on the wrong person.
Here are a few areas in the employee recruiting process that always take longer than you think.
- Drafting the Job Description and getting it approved
- Drafting the Job Advertisement and getting it approved
- Conducting proper interviews
- Assessing the candidates
If you are short on time you may want to assign someone else to do the interviews. You might also consider bringing in an external consultant to avoid time crunches.
Mapping out the time requirements ahead of time is a great investment in making sure you hire the right person.
Budget
How much money do you want to spend in order to hire your next employee?
Because the employee recruitment process can cost a little or a lot, depending on what you want to achieve.
For example, you could put a simple job posting up on a free recruitment website and hope for the best. This approach works effectively for some companies.
If you take this approach, you should also keep in mind that any recruitment activity can also serve as a marketing and promotion activity for your company.
So you may want to invest in hiring a professional to write exciting copy and really build a strong brand profile.
Not only will this appeal to potential candidates, but it will also send a positive message about your company to everyone who reads it.
Need. Time. Budget.
These are the key factors to consider when it comes to assessing your current employee situation and figuring out why you are recruiting.
Pro Tip
Many Associations post relevant job postings on their websites. For example, if you want to put out a posting for a Human Resources Coordinator position, then you could contact the Chartered Professionals in Human Resources (CPHR) Association and find out how to put a job posting on their website (which is seen by more than 6000 human resources professionals).
Step 2: Map Out Your Employee Recruitment Process
Proper documentation of the employee recruitment process is essential.
Not only will this approach build consistency, but it will also create a defensible paper trail in case any liability issues arise.
I also suggest:
- Rating your candidates answers against the posted job and the company’s values every time
- Ranking your candidates in a transparent way every time
- Retaining your documents in a secure storage situation every time.
If you choose to use an online tool to support your recruitment activities, then you should record which tool you used in your documentation.
Useful employee recruiting tools include:
- Interview Assistant – for scheduling
- Job Fit Assessment – to reduce interview biases
- Harrison Assessments – to improve selection and fit
Step 3: Complete Interviews With Tough Questions
One of the best ways to help business leaders learn how to ask tough questions is to help them learn how to follow an ‘interview script’.
An interview script is the best way to ensure that the same questions are asked in a repeatable way.
It also allows candidate answers to be compared more equally, because each candidate was asked the same questions.
An interview script should have well-crafted probing questions to ensure you get a clear full answer from the candidate.
For example, if the interview question is ‘What did you achieve in the last year at work?’, then you should also be prepared to additionally probe the candidate and ask:
- ‘With who?’
- ‘With what budget?’
- ‘With what results?’
- ‘How many?’
- ‘For how long?’
By supplementing the main question you’ll be able to validate the candidates’ answer, and also create an engaging dialogue during the interview.
As you grow your your ability to ask tough questions, you’ll be able to go even deeper.
For example you’ll get to a point where you can ask something like:
‘Tell me about a time when you put your personal values second to getting the job done, and why was this a hard decision’.
Pro Tip
Always remember that the job candidate is interviewing you as well. They want to know about your company, your managers, compensation, why the role is vacant, you company culture and more. So be ready to answer their tough questions about your business too.
Step 4: Onboarding For Success
“You only get one chance to make a great first impression.”
This is especially true during the first year of employment for a new hire.
So you should take as much care as possible to support new employees.
What is Onboarding?
The term onboarding is used to describe the introduction of the new employee to the company.
The new hire should be warmly greeted with organized documentation, schedules, and checklists. I also recommend that you set up introductory meetings with members of the team and the managers too.
If you don’t do this, then your new employee will likely become disengaged very quickly as they try to adjust to the new company culture.
In my own experience I have seen the new hire without a computer for a week. I have seen the lack of a proper orientation manual hinder an employee’s contributions to the team.
I have also seen ‘new hire lunches’ on zoom to welcome the new employee.
Successful companies document and implement 30/60/90 day follow up meetings (30 minutes long) with the new hire will help to address any gaps, while opening the conversation around expectations and deliverables. This approach is a great way to normalize performance feedback and open up the conversation about ‘what is going well’ and ‘what needs to be addressed’.
Whatever approach you decide to take, you should know that a successful onboarding experience will not only be good for that individual, but it will also reinforce a positive company culture.
Step 5: Get Help From A Human Resources Consultant
A Chartered Professional in Human Resources Consultant can not only help you hire the right candidate, but they can also help you build an ongoing talent pipeline.
They will also ensure that you have the best:
- Interview scripts
- Reference documents
- Strategy documents
- Process Documents
Each recruitment is a chance to examine your current documentation and processes so you can make improvements.
A Chartered Professional in Human Resources Consultant can provide experienced advice and best practices that will help you grow your business in a way that is aligned to your company values.
Conclusion
In this article we talked about ‘How To Build An Effective Employee Recruitment System In 5 Steps’ which are:
- Assess Your Current Employee Situation And Figure Out Why You Are Recruiting
- Map Out Your Recruitment Process
- Complete Interviews With Tough Questions
- Onboarding For Success
- Get Help From A Human Resources Consultant
If you follow these steps, then you’ll be able to build an effective employee recruitment system that will help your company grow and thrive.
Dieter Wentzel
Dieter is a Certified Human Resources professional who is accredited in Harrison Assessments.
He has work experience in public, private, not for profit and transitioning organizations moving between merger, acquisitions, and divestitures.
He has also spent time in the Total Rewards sphere and is a Certified Compensation Professional with experience in Base Compensation, Sales Compensation, Short-Term Incentives and Long-Term Incentives.
Dieter is also a recovering marathon runner and a father of twins.