7 Tips To Recruit Good Staff
Recruiting the right people is crucial to the success of any business or organisation.
If you hire an untrustworthy or unreliable person, it can have a detrimental effect on your business, your other staff, or your clients.
With today’s highly specialised workforce, it’s more important than ever to make sure you get the right people for the job. But how can you take steps to make sure you’ve got the right people in positions of responsibility? That’s the question we’re going to try and answer with the following 5 tips.
1. Make sure the role is well defined
The first step is to make sure that you know exactly what the role entails and the skillset you want. Don’t create a vague job description, you need to be as precise as possible. The more definite you are about what the job involves, what skills are needed, what the responsibilities are, and how you want the job to be done, the more likely it is you’ll make a successful hiring decision. Once you’ve done that, you need to make sure that you only interview applicants that fit the bill – i.e. they have a skillset, experience and attitude that matches exactly what you’re looking for.
2. Make a long term recruitment plan
You should have a plan that involves predicting growth and how your company may look in years to come. It’s a good idea to come up with a hiring and recruiting plan for 1 year, 5 years, and 10 years into the future. In other words, you should try to plan how a new recruit will progress and develop in their role and what scope there may be for promotion. You can communicate this plan to your applicants or new recruits.
3. Carry out a DBS check – if appropriate for the role
A DBS check is a criminal background check that will highlight any historical misdemeanours. There are three levels of check – basic, standard, and enhanced. Basic DBS checks are for any type of job and only reveal unspent convictions. Standard DBS checks are for more responsible roles and reveal spent and unspent convictions, warnings, reprimands, and cautions. Enhanced DBS checks tend to be reserved for safeguarding roles – i.e. those that involve working closely with children and vulnerable adults and are designated as regulated activities by the DBS. Enhanced DBS checks reveal the same things as a standard check, but also any relevant police notes and they can include a DBS barred list check.
4. Get references from past employers
Make sure you request references from previous employers or education providers. Combined with the DBS check, this will give you a good amount of information on their character and attitude. This means that when it comes to the interview you can concentrate on making sure that their skills are correctly aligned to the role by asking them how they would respond to certain scenarios and checking their factual knowledge, for instance.
5. See how they interact with your team
It’s a good idea to introduce potential new recruits to your team. You can do this on the day of the interview. Let the candidates meet and mingle with your team on a break or lunch time. You can observe how well they interact and whether your existing staff are comfortable talking to them and there is some kind of rapport is built.
6. Listen to them carefully
During the interview and also when the candidates are interacting with others, you should listen carefully. Pay attention to anything that may raise a red flag. A snide remark about someone else. A lack of basic good manners. Anything that causes concern, you can follow up with a question or two to check whether it may be a deal-breaker when it comes to making the hiring decision.
7. Invite them to ask questions
Most people, if they are genuinely interested in the position, will come prepared with some questions. The best candidates will have a genuine interest in the role and want to find out exactly what it entails, what will be expected of them, opportunities for development and progression, etc. If they only ask about salary, number of hours, and holiday entitlements, then they may not be so passionate about the role.
Summary
Hiring the right people is all about making sure you find out about their past and get a good understanding of their attitude and skill-set.
Carrying out a DBS check is a good way to verify that they have a clean history and are of previous good character. To find out more about DBS checks, including how to get them done online, check out our other blog posts or drop us a message today.
