Recruiting the right way – it can be enjoyable!

We had the joy of recruiting a new staff member recently and it was great to have the feeling of not just offering a role to someone for one of our clients, but to actually offer them an opportunity with our own company. It gave me a really good insight again into the feeling that our clients get when they give someone a great opportunity to start with them, and that is why I enjoy recruitment.

How do you normally find the right one?
Finding the right person can be easy, sometimes really difficult and sometimes just down-right frustrating! Speaking with our clients and those in our network, we have heard many ways that they have recruited over the years including their frustrations. Generally, you may advertise for a role, you may know someone in your extended network or someone may approach you and they are too good to refuse, and you may have a recruiter that you trust to do the recruit for you. We have found that all of these methods work and having a solid strategy and strong recruitment process are two of the key elements to finding the right person for your role. If you don’t have a good strategy or good recruitment process, you can still find staff (especially with the large number of applicants presently in the market). However, you may not find the right one and more importantly, you may exclude or miss the best ones.

What strategy do you use?
Getting back to basics, let’s say that you have costed out and also decided that a role does exist and can be paid for. We advise to not just hit SEEK / CareerOne / other job board or the newspaper and place an advertisement. If you trawl through either one of those you will see quite a number of bland and clearly unprepared advertisements that are unappealing to good candidates and may also have the chance of attracting the wrong candidates due to an incorrect job title. We do advise the following:

• Clearly define the role – responsibilities/duties/qualifications/skills/personal qualities/hours/pay/conditions/ when it will commence
• Work out how potential candidates will find out about it – your network, advertising, recruitment agencies, internal staff looking for promotion or movement
• Structure a good advertisement that is appealing, well laid out and includes information pertinent to the role, then advertise through those channels
• Have a clearly defined recruitment process to screen and handle applications, interview properly to ensure that candidates do fit the criteria, reference check to your criteria, and negotiate well with the successful candidate

Enjoy the recruitment process!
By having the right strategy and process in place, recruiting that new staff member can be an enjoyable process. Yes, people can let you down – they may have another job offer, may not be as good as their resume suggests, or may start and then leave for personal reasons. A lot of these things are just out of your control and may happen from time to time. Good processes will ensure that better applicants are selected from the beginning, having the right skills, qualifications and experience, and that they are actually choosing to work for your company or small business. The best part is that when you do find the right person, you can have that great feeling of saying “Congratulations and welcome to our team”. I enjoyed it and I am sure that you will too.

If you would like more information about our process and how it could assist your business, feel free to email or call us at any time. We would be happy to share this with you.