Recruitment isn’t easy. Even if you have an entire team to help you, it’s expensive and time-consuming. Do it by yourself and it’s most likely even more challenging.

Plus, if you mess it up and hire the wrong person, the repercussions are costlier.

But no matter what approach you take, consider using the following reliable methods to make your recruitment efforts more effective.

Craft a great job description

Effective recruitment starts with creating a job description that makes sense for your business. You can’t just copy and paste one from online (even if it’s well-written) then expect it to be applicable to your firm as well.

For instance, your copywriter vacancy may require a wordsmith who specialises in enterprise software, while another firm might need one who’s worked in an ad agency.

The key point: A great job description aptly captures your organisation’s unique needs.

To accomplish this, you need to perform an in-depth job analysis to identify what your business requires for a role. The process will involve gathering the relevant people in your company, then having them:

• Identify the role’s objectives, tasks, necessary tools and processes.
• Determine the skills and qualifications needed to competently do the job.

You can then have your team create a clear, concise and easily readable job description based on those details.

Important: If you’re hiring your first employee, you’ll have to do the job analysis by yourself. To find out what you need for the vacancy, you’ll have to research similar jobs.

The best place to start would be employment websites, where you a) input your desired job title, b) see what comes up, and c) learn about the functions of similar or related roles.

Sell your company as a great place to work

Whenever you recruit, you’re asking candidates to either:

1. Choose your company over other potential employers.
2. Leave their current employer.

Either way, you need to convince them that working with you is the better choice. There are several ways to do this, such as:

• Highlighting the benefits you provide in the job description.
• Offering competitive compensation in your industry.
• Demonstrating courtesy and professionalism when communicating with candidates.
• Monitoring your online reputation and ensuring it reflects positively on your company.

Bottom line: It’s all about developing a positive and consistent employer brand.

Choose skill over experience

Employers often put more stock in experience than skills, and they usually hire the seasoned instead of the greenhorn. This is because employers are hesitant to take risks like:

• Investing in an employee who doesn’t stay.
• Bringing in someone inexperienced who might not be able to do the work.

Here’s the thing: recruiting for skill over experience is more beneficial because:

1. Having more experience doesn’t necessarily result in better performance and work quality.
2. Focusing on work experience may exclude people who are otherwise strong candidates.
3. Core skills (e.g. communication, problem solving, adaptability) are transferable.

The trick is to learn how to evaluate such skills. For best results, make sure to always consider a candidate’s potential and test their abilities with real-world applications.

Practice employee retention strategies

Your push to recruit top talent would be futile if they don’t stay in your company. The trick is to apply employee strategies like:

• Introducing a comprehensive orientation and onboarding process for new hires.
• Providing avenues for communication and feedback.
• Investing in your employees’ training and development.
• Promoting a healthy work-life balance.
• Offering flexible work arrangements.

By practicing employee retention, you’ll keep highly skilled and motivated people who genuinely want to be part of your company, and are intent on contributing to your organisation’s success.

Ask the right interview questions

The job interview is a crucial part of the recruitment process. If you ask the wrong questions, you’ll likely hire the wrong person, and waste precious time and resources.

To help you recognise the high performers, you’ll need to use the right interview questions. The wrinkle here is that the questions will vary depending on the role, which means you’ll have to do some research as to what’s effective for certain positions.

Tip: For more revealing answers, try to incorporate:

• Open-ended questions, which can’t be answered by a yes or no. These will enable you to easily get more details.
  
  
• Behaviour-based questions, which ask candidates how they’ve handled certain work situations in the past.

Do a thorough background check

According to a HireRight employment report, 85% of employers caught candidates lying on their applications or resumes. The most popular fibs used by applicants include:

• Inflating their salary or title.
• Exaggerating past employment dates.
• Falsifying their credentials.
• Concealing a criminal record.
• Hiding a drug habit.

This is where the need for a background check comes in: it lets you verify that all the information provided by candidates are accurate. You can a) do the background check yourself, or b) hire an external firm to carry it out.

Should you decide the former, see to it that you:

• Get legal advice. Background checks come with certain legal concerns you should clear beforehand.
• Give candidates a chance to clarify what you’ve researched – the information you’ve gathered may be incorrect.

Employment background checks typically include verification of work history, references (e.g. former bosses), education, credit history, driving records, criminal history and drug test results.

Companies may also do a character check, which may involve speaking with the candidate’s acquaintances and looking through their social media history.

Boost your recruitment with us

You can also partner with Remote Workmate to make your recruitment easier and more effective. We can do the entire process for you, find high-performing recruiters for your business, and more.

And unlike freelancing platforms where you do everything yourself, we do all the heavy lifting for you, including payroll and onboarding.

You can actually choose from our pool of top candidates right away. Simply visit our Hotlist at:
https://remoteworkmate.com/hotlist

You can browse a wide range of profiles on our Hotlist page. Once you find a qualified VA, simply fill out the form at the bottom and we’ll get in touch with you at first opportunity.