Hiring employees - A complete guide to hire right

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Hiring can be a tiring process. Hiring employees is of supreme importance to organizations as the employees form the base of every organization. 

There are gazillions of things running through the employer’s mind while hiring an employee. Here are a few tips to hire right.

To hire the right candidate, first, you must determine the need for the resource. This is best done by writing a JD. But how do you write a JD that attracts the most suitable talent?

Let’s begin by learning a little bit more about JDs.

What is a JD?

A JD is a job description.

What does a JD do?

A JD, in short, tells the candidate about the skills and qualifications required for the role or position being advertised. A JD is to be viewed as a finely scripted synopsis of the ideal candidate to perform the job.

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How to write a JD that gets the best talent?

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You have to keep the following in mind before writing a JD. Remember that this is the first piece of information that the candidate is getting about your organization. Hiring employees is not your primary concern. Hiring employees who are smart, passionate and talented is your primary concern. Make sure that the JD is compelling, attractive and precise.

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An opener about the organization:

The candidate looking to apply may not know too much about the organization. It would be helpful to the candidate if you add a few lines describing the same. This will also help ease the whole process of hiring employees. 

Aim to make your job description more engaging and appealing to the job seeker by using supporting visual elements as well, in order to illustrate and drive the point home. Job postings are a great example of how relevant graphs and charts can add value to the employer and enrich the experience for the talented job seeker. Try to emulate this approach and visualize key data points that will help a potential candidate get a clearer picture of your organization and what you’re offering. Add a chatbot to improve their user experience.

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Write about the company culture:

Cultural fits are now more regarded than skills to perform the job. Talk a little bit about what you represent. Company culture pronounces the personality of an organization and plays a major role in attracting and retaining top talent.

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Talk about the group that is directly involved with the job role:

Give details about the group, the problem they are trying to solve, the constituency it intends to serve, the product it aspires to build or the services it provides. This will help the candidate get an idea about what they are getting in to. This will help to bring down employee turn over caused due to mismatch in interests.

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Provide a background of the reporting manager:

People don’t leave companies. They leave the managers they work for. People also join organizations for the managers they are going to be working for.

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Give details pertaining to the job:

This will help job seekers to decide. Detail about the challenges or needs the job poses. It is typically helpful to state the percentage of time one expects the employee to travel in the position.

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Location of the job: 

If your organization is present across multiple locations or cities, it would be helpful to let prospective candidates figure out commuting options.

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Benefits that the job provides:

Flexible hours, work from home and other such perks that your company supports for prospects to make judicious decisions.

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Incentives provided:

Talk about insurance coverage or other aspects you believe are important for the prospects to decide.

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Point to profiles of smart people working in the company: Smart people inspire, especially if they have done something unique and have a brand. They tend to be talent magnets, so use the association to your benefit.

Let’s take a quick look at the style and substance of the JD

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• Keep the JD short since too much text is time-consuming and people might miss out on the main points.
• Use bullets to communicate the gist
• Use simple, easy-to-read everyday language
• Expand acronyms to avoid misreads or misinterpretations
• Separate and clearly label ‘Must have’ from ‘Good to have’
• No spelling mistakes or incorrect grammar
• Be specific – No maybes or ‘probably’
• Provide a summary first and then the details
• Tell the candidate that their role will be meaningful & impactful
• Personalize – If you aim high, then aim personal
• Respect people’s time- Keep it short and consumable. A JD read should not take more than 3 minutes. If it takes more than 3 minutes, then you have lost the prospect’s interest by that time.

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Now that you have created a compelling JD, you will have a pool of resumes flooding in. What do you do with them? Do you manually go through all of them and miss out on important aspects because you forgot to drink coffee? No! We have you covered. Let’s take a look at how to effectively screen resumes and get you on a roll with hiring employees.

“40% of executive and management time is spent in hiring in fast-growing organizations. It is all the more important for pre-screening a resume right.”

There is a massive volume of resumes and profiles that are now available. LinkedIn and quick filtering come with great ubiquity. Therefore, pre-screening has become an even more important step in the hiring cycle.

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Pre-screening a resume requires experience

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A pre-screening requires an experienced hand. Scrutinizing a resume is important to check for fit and decide if it is worth the organization’s time to call the candidate for more scrutiny. A resume hides more than it says and the percentage of well-written resumes being really low, pre-screening can never be a perfect process. But pre-screening indeed helps.

A badly written resume with grammatical mistakes is a big turn off – the candidate does not have the right language skills and has clearly not even bothered to take advantage of Grammarly free trial and submit proofread resume. They obviously haven’t put in the effort and it’s a bad step to start with for the candidate. It is good to keep this in mind while hiring employees.

Getting back to pre-screening, individual filter criteria will vary and biases will slip in.

Went to the same college as I did. He gets a bigger weight, worked at a company I admired, gets a higher weight, is from the same town I grew up in? Has the same last name as my aunt? Has some projects that I always wanted to work on? You get the drift. How do we make this process consistent?

How does the organization define a set of filters that apply across a JD and across all positions? Can machines do it better? How about getting a set of rules that apply that a machine can sign for applicability and score based on a weightage system.

The benefit of consistency and filtering by the same rules far outweigh the advantages of finding the diamond in the rough. And trust me you cannot find diamonds in the rough by looking at resumes. So, let the machine do the job more efficiently and without biases.

There are multiple HR software in the market which will lend a helping hand in the same.

Human Capital Management Platforms provides for a probability scoring based on standard rule sets that you can customize. It saves a lot of time while hiring employees where the applicability of the probability score in the absolute does not matter much and what is more relevant for effective screening is a consistent way across that provides the right relative rankings to focus on.

Certain brilliantly curated human resource management software will provide insights like 4 or 5 candidates that are relatively ranked higher than all applicants. Get peopleHum now and see how it works. You will be nothing less than impressed. That is our assurance. 

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The JD is done, you have screened the resume and now what is left is the interview!

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An apprehensive candidate has a lot of open spaces in their minds when they come in for an interview. Mostly, because they did a lot for getting an interview in the first place. They have questions, apprehensions and are not looking forward to the judgment and scrutiny.

What can an organization do to make it better for the candidate? How does an organization start the interview?

When a candidate walks in for an interview, there are a lot of things going through her mind.

What exactly is going through the candidate’s mind? Nervousness? Will she get the job? Apprehension about what sort of individuals will be interviewing her. Will they give her a tough time? Will she be given a chance to ask questions?

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When the candidate walks in…

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There is a lot of sensitivity in her surroundings. She is absorbing all the cues from the environment. The frown on people’s faces, how she is greeted, the smells. Is the glass clean? Is the carpet plush? Are the lights working? Is the temperature right? Your candidates will notice everything.

Pay close attention to your environment. The value of a clean, humming environment which makes candidates feel warm and welcome is immeasurable. Millennials now want personalization with every experience. Create a concierge-like experience.

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Make them feel special

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When the candidate walks in, ask them how they are doing today. Did they have a hard time finding the place? Would they like some beverage? 

Once settled, the candidate will start observing the environment. When the employees of the organization come out as happy and content,  it gives the impression of a dynamic organization with vibrancy where people are in control. You don’t have to aim for efficiency but a sense of competent casualness.

Be casual but competent. Talk about the kind of work you overlook in the organization. Tell how the organization is growing. Exchange ideas, if need be. This will help a lot to attract the right pool while hiring employees.

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Key Roles of an Interviewer

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The main role that an interviewer plays in evaluations is determining whether the candidate-

• Knows what they claim
• Is the right fit for the role and for the organization
• Matches the needs of the job and the role
• Has  a demeanor and behavior that fits the organization
• Can and will handle change
• Has interests that are viewed as favorable to growth and well being
• Has a learning attitude to adjust to changing needs

The interviewer feels a sense of power – power of judgment over another human being. Some interviewers consume this power and that leads them to try to prove how much smarter they are as compared to the candidate. Besides, this approach is usually fraught with the failure of the stated objectives. Rather give the candidate some space. 

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All About Getting an Interview Started

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Start the interview in a room with a whiteboard to draw out and have the candidate have an interactive experience. This will definitely help you during the interview process-

• Make it more about the candidate.
• Make the candidate the center of the experience.
• Approach the interview more as a conversation rather than a scrutiny
• Make sure that the candidate takes a seat in an open listening position.
• Face the candidate directly to look into their eyes.

The eyes say a lot. Make sure you are able to look into their eyes confidently. More importantly, don’t be fidgety. This might sound strange because you would expect the candidate to be fidgety but the advice equally holds for interviewers too.

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A touch of personalization

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Start by asking the candidate about themselves. Don’t launch into questions related to the job itself but know how they heard about the company. Eventually, ask them questions about the company to see how much research they have done.

Now make sure that you go through the JD in detail with the candidate so that the job and role responsibilities are clear.

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Relax and let the candidate relax

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Do not create a pressured, pretentious environment. This might intimidate the candidate and might affect their performance. You don’t want to lose someone who would have been a good employee because you put them under pressure before they even joined. Do you? Don’t try to make the candidate nervous on purpose. Realize the importance of smiling. No candidate would like to join an organization with grumpy people, who have a superiority complex.

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What's more...

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Ask the candidate why they think they are suitable for the job and launch into evaluating the candidate on various aspects. Make sure that the candidate at all times is comfortable.

For instance, ask them about their experiences and what they enjoy to do outside of work. Or how they spend their weekends. Get to know them personally. Note their more significant qualities and others you want other interviewers to check on.

Personalize the interview for the candidate. Throw away the script, for instance, to have fun and be cheerful. For sure, it will go a long way in finding the right talent for your organization. 

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What else to keep a note of while hiring right?

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Check if the candidate has a copy of her resume or would she like to have it printed. Do recall the number of times you were stressed before heading for an interview. Don’t worry, otherwise, you may start the interview process on a bad note. Be considerate. It will show a lot about the company culture as well.

Hiring employees is definitely a strenuous and important task. Hiring right is significant to keep the organization healthy and growing!