Right Recruits

Recruitment is a daunting process as much for the company looking for a new employee as the potential candidates. This process is made all the more overwhelming if you have been working on your own up to now and this is your first foray into recruitment.

Don’t worry, we know it’s tough and we have put together a short but comprehensive guide on how to kickstart your recruitment process and find the right candidate for your company. We help you find, not only the most qualified person for your position, but someone who has the soft skills and right personality to go with it.

Get Clear

The last thing you need is someone who isn’t clear on the role they’re being recruited for and that's why it’s your responsibility to make sure that the job description you create is as clear and as accurate as possible. Remember that you are only recruiting for one role and that role needs to be defined. If you find that the job seems to span several different areas of responsibility then you might need to consider creating another post, but you’ll need to focus on one job at a time for now.

When you’re creating your job description, set out the tasks you expect your employee to carry out on a weekly basis. You’ll need to decide how closely you’ll want to supervise this person and if they’ll be trusted with all the responsibility you want to hand over straight away or if you’ll need to pass that over to them gradually.

Soft Skills

After you’ve defined the role and the responsibilities you’ll need to look at the person specification. What kind of person are you looking for? Will they be highly qualified or do you value experience over qualifications? Perhaps a combination of both is needed. Remember, the salary you’re offering will reflect this. Think about the hard skills they’ll need, as set out in the taks they’ll have to perform, but also some of the softer skills as well. For example, will they need to keep calm under pressure, work well in a team or be able to set their own workload and work largely unsupervised? All these things you’ll need to make clear in this person specification document.

When it comes to interviewing, you may feel as nervous as your candidates but work on coming across as friendly and firm. You want to see how well your interviewee performs under a little bit of pressure so don’t go out of your way to relax them.

Take the guesswork out of the proceedings with a tick list that covers all the tasks and skills you’ve specified and work down that list asking for examples as you go. Whether you’re recruiting for an accountancy firm, a taxi driver or a company that manufactures polystyrene insulation products you’re looking for just the right fit for your team.

Go with your gut instinct when it comes to personality. Make sure you click with the candidate and find that perfect person who’s going to slot into your company and give you the support you need to help turn your small business into a great business.