Check Your Hiring Approach: The Do’s and Don’ts of Recruitment

A lot can be known about the company’s culture, environment and vibes from the way its HR team conducts the recruitment processes and there’s no alternative to creating a positive impression on the prospective employee’s mind. Recruiting and hiring new and young talent can be daunting as well as an exciting exercise but following a strategic and organized method can eliminate most of the associated challenges and chaos.

As a responsible HR person, it is imperative to understand the value of hiring the right person for the right position and the amount of good it can do to the respective team and the company at large. A successful recruitment process needs the HR team to be effectively considerate towards both the prospect’s and the company’s objectives and goals.

This blog can be considered as a handy doctrine in exploring what you should follow or avoid, to drive a successful recruitment/hiring strategy in your company.

Always Do:

1. Prepare and Plan the first stage: Gain complete clarity about the job vacancy and the role that is created and start by understanding the team/company requirements and expectations from the specific candidate. Understand the skillset, expertise, and experience that the prospective employee needs to possess and accordingly create a detailed Job Description. It is the most critical and first step towards getting the right talent on-board.

2. Create an interesting Job Description: If you want your candidate to stand out in the crowd, a creative and engaging job description always helps. Take more effort in stating the obvious in an intriguing way that will catch a reader’s attention. A boring JD always lags behind, however interesting the position might be! Use a hook phrase or other innovative techniques like video descriptions. Add some humor and wit to make the job sounds exciting to the youngsters.

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3. Pay attention to advertisements: While looking for prospective employees, companies often go overboard with advertisements without investing a proper thought-process, which makes the copy sound either over-confident and over-promising or totally distrustful. In either case, it fails to serve the purpose of engaging the right audience. Rather, write the adverts in a clear yet catchy way, keep away from discriminatory language and over-exaggeration, keep the tone of the advert reasonable and write in a language that is unique and attractive.

4. Look beyond professional skills: Effective recruiting/hiring process is a one that also pays equal importance to candidate’s interpersonal and people’s skills, real-world problem-solving expertise, and behavioral approach. Understand if the particular role requires a candidate who has more than just professional experience and expects other competencies like leadership and communication skills, level of confidence and knack for extra-curricular and so on. Understand what values the candidates can add to the team and the company as a whole.

5. Make informed decisions about shortlisting: Make sure to know the candidate inside out. Feel free to find information about him/her from social media sources like LinkedIn, online platforms like personal blogs, references mentioned in their resumes and other legitimate ways. It sometimes becomes necessary to judge and evaluate the skillset, reasoning ability, intelligence, presence of mind, subject matter expertise and required experience through conversations, aptitude tests, written tests, personality, and behavioral assessment tests.

6. Effectuate the interview process: Prepare carefully on the day of interviewing the candidates. Exude professionalism and empathy while inviting the prospective candidates and introduce the company well. Make them feel comfortable so they do away with the pre-interview stress and tension. Be observant about their body language as a relaxed candidate will sound more confident. Keep your tone informal, friendly and approachable while asking questions. Ensure your questions are clear and fully understandable. Stay away from biased, judgemental, prejudiced and discriminatory comments. Be transparent and honest about the job and the company expectations. Ask relevant and competency-based questions. Let the candidate do most of the talking. Lastly, be a good listener.

7. Have an effective employee onboarding: Remember, a great onboarding makes a lot of difference! Ensure to keep their desks and equipment ready. Help them set system and user passwords and accounts with ease. Make sure their computers, desk-phones, notepads, pens and other items are kept ready before they are allotted their seats. Introduce them well to the office, prepare a good induction plan and allocate each of them with a buddy. Have a prompt and easy training plan ready.

Don’t Ever:

1. Rush the hiring process: We all work within a specified timeline – so we tend to hurry things up to finish them on time. But rushing the hiring process for just the sake of recruiting someone can be utterly detrimental for the company. When the wrong people get hired to just close the positions, it can prove to be a total waste of time, effort and money for the company and the department.

2. Ask insensitive or irrelevant questions: The interview framework reflects the company’s overall thought-process and approach towards resource-building. Always ensure not to ask discriminatory, controversial, insensitive and irrelevant questions like ‘are you single or married’, ‘are you planning to have kids’, ‘are you planning to marry’, and so on. Keep away from making politically-inclined opinions or from conversations around sexual orientation and other controversial subjects.

3. Use ‘one size fits all’ Job Description: Mostly, every job description varies from role to role. Even business requirements and expectations, employee skillset and expertise-level change over time. It is always advisable to review and edit your job description before publishing the same on social media and other platforms. Give extra attention to what exactly are you seeking out of your candidates and their positions.

4. Take the candidates for granted: Remember, the candidates have found your job description and company profile worthy enough to give you a personal visit or maybe he/she is in need of a good job. Stay empathetic towards their needs and efforts and avoid taking them for granted through attitudes like long-waiting time before the interview rounds, interviewing them at inappropriate venues, not asking them refreshments, rude or indifferent tone of language, etc.

5. Sound biased and judgemental during the interview: Try to ask questions and hit a conversation by going beyond the details and facts mentioned in the resume. Sometimes, the CV doesn’t say everything about the candidate. Try not to judge the candidate by just his/her resume and stay away from biased perceptions and assumptions. Make a list of intelligent and relevant questions to assess the candidate’s proficiency and try to hit a balance between professionalism and amiability. While interviewing make sure not to sound over-familiar and over-confident and avoid interruptions between the conversation.

6. Make false promises to candidates: Stay away from making false or doubtful promises to candidates, especially regarding the career prospects, job profile and salary structure. Be as transparent, honest and candid as possible to allow the candidate to make an informed and mature decision. Also, it is always advisable to provide full information to the candidate, pertaining to the job, expectations, office culture and company background.

7. Forget to acknowledge the applications: It is only unfair to keep the candidates waiting for a reply. So, ensure to acknowledge all their emails/written communications as this makes a lot of positive impressions about the company’s reputation. Sometimes, it might prove to be really time-consuming but do it anyway. Candidates hate to feel ignored and when their emails go unanswered, it creates a disturbing brand experience, and bad news spreads faster than the good ones!

While some of us can rely on their instincts while recruiting resources, it goes without saying that hiring should be in sync with the corporate strategy and purpose. Hiring the right people who would be the ‘best fit’ for the company’s culture and growth-structure can turn out to be a wonderful experience. At the same time, it is equally crucial to ensure that the company is capable of aligning with the prospect’s career goals. A positive and productive recruitment process not only drives employee longevity and loyalty but also enhances the company’s brand image to the world. Hence, make sure to foster transparency throughout the process without rushing things for the sake of it!