Tips for Hiring the ‘Right’ Staff

When employers recruit for a role, they take for granted that applicants will have the essential, and quite often the majority of desirable attributes listed on the job specification. What has the biggest influence on the hiring manager’s decision to recruit is almost always how well they see the individual fitting in, whether that be within the company or the specific team. So what can employers do to ensure that they hire candidates with the most suitable work ethic and personality to succeed in their organisation?

Attraction

Candidate attraction has evolved dramatically largely as a result of developments in technology and how people use it both personally and professionally. No longer being used solely for personal use, social media is now connecting employers with potential employees and when used effectively, can convert passive candidates to active ones.

When considering working for a new company, employees tend to use the company website to form a perception of work-life balance within the organisation, and to decide whether they would be a good person-organisation fit. For companies to succeed in attracting the ‘right’ staff, they must showcase themselves, so candidates have a feel for what it would be like to work there (Hunt, 2010).

Selection

The process of selection, when broken down, essentially consists of measuring how a range of people differ, and extending this to predict how these differences translate into workplace performance (Analoui, 2016). There are various methods of selection assessment including typical interviews, personality tests, sample work tests, numerical reasoning tests, in tray exercises, the list goes on.

Research shows that to best predict how someone will perform in their job, the closest method of assessment to ‘perfect prediction’ is by using an assessment centre to combine a variety of these assessment methods and build a broader picture of the individual. The configuration of activities in the assessment centre should, of course, be relevant to the work that the individual will be expected to perform in their day-to-day role and relationships that they will be required to develop and maintain.

According to Cook (2016), selection criteria should be reliable and valid measures, reflective of the skills and qualities required for the role being recruited for; they should be cost-effective and proportionate to the seniority of the role, or the complexity of skill required; and they should be both easy to use for the assessor and fair for the candidate.

Remember: you will only find the ‘right’ candidate if you showcase your organisation accurately, otherwise you may find that candidates leave as soon as they work out the reality.