Do-it-yourself recruitment can take your business only so far. Know that posting job ads, waiting for applications to arrive, and hoping for the best isn’t the most effective way to handle recruitment.

Especially if you’re trying to hire the best person for the job.

This is particularly important for startups, which normally aren’t flush with funds. Why? Because having terrific talent can help you rise above the chaos and outperform the competition.

Besides recruitment, having an HR staff can also help with personnel management functions like:

• Onboarding new employees.
• Taking the lead in employee engagement programs.
• Setting up wellness drives.
• Designing training modules.

When to hire an HR specialist

While it’s clear that every business needs an HR specialist (or an entire HR staff), when exactly should you hire one? It depends; there are two possible answers:

1. Ideally, you hire at first opportunity. From a legal standpoint, organisations will eventually have to comply with applicable labour laws, and having an HR specialist will help you do so.
   
   
2. The second – and possibly longer answer – is when it benefits your company. For example:
   
   
   • If your business is experiencing more demand for your product/service, thus the need for more skilled employees.
     
     
   • If you’re having difficulty competing with big firms when recruiting top talent, which means you need help in attracting and landing better candidates.

Recruitment specialist hiring tips

Here are a few strategies to help you find that great HR specialist.

Make a detailed and compelling job description

A vague or poorly written job description won’t entice job seekers to apply, making it harder for you to find the best talent. Worse, you might even hire the wrong person, which will be a costly mistake.

A good job description identifies a role’s objectives, skills, experience, and tasks. It should also sell the role and your company to make the position more enticing. You can do this by including the benefits you provide and the parts of your company’s culture which may interest candidates.

For more details, here’s how you can make a job description that clicks with your business.

Find someone tech savvy

These days, it’s not enough for HR specialists to merely be competent at human resource management. They also need to be proficient at technology, especially in HR tools like:

• Applicant tracking systems
• Payroll processing software
• Benefits management platforms
• Employee engagement tools
• Employee onboarding solutions

With a strong grasp of these technologies, your HR staff will reduce the time they spend on administrative tasks, enabling them to focus more on acquiring the best talent, which will give you a huge competitive advantage.

Get referrals

Referrals from friends, family, and associates are a helpful resource when you’re looking for talented recruitment specialists. Why? Because referred employees:

• Take the shortest time to hire.
• Stay longer than those hired through other channels.
• Have the lowest turnover rate.
• Cut down your recruitment expenses.

For best results, encourage your employees to refer quality candidates by giving them incentives like bonuses, paid time off, or gift certificates, which are rewarded for successfully placed referrals.

Soft skills matter

In addition to having expertise in HR management and being tech savvy, your HR specialist should also posses a range of crucial soft skills. In an HR setting, the most important of these include:

• Communication skills (e.g. listening, written, non-verbal)
• Conflict management (e.g. empathy, negotiation)
• Organisation (e.g. attention to detail, administration)
• Decision-making (e.g. problem solving)

These soft skills are essential because they influence how well your staff can work and interact with others. After all, we’re talking about human resources.

Ask the right interview questions

Your first HR specialist will be your point person when hiring future talent for your business. This is why you need to understand their ability to interview, analyse, and identify the best candidate.

Here are a few sample interview questions you can ask candidates of your HR specialist role:

• What kinds of interview questions do you usually ask candidates?
• Tell me about a time when you had to read between the lines to establish what a candidate was really saying.
• Tell me about a difficult encounter you had with an colleague, manager, or leader and how you handled it.
• In your past position, what attributes did you look for in a candidate during the recruitment process?
• When it comes to recruitment, what biases do you have and how do you keep them from influencing who to hire?

Don’t wait for a purple squirrel

There’s no such thing as a purple squirrel, which is a metaphor recruiters use to describe the perfect candidate. Clearly, both don’t exist.

The problem is that companies and entrepreneurs sometimes set unrealistic expectations for a role they’re hiring for. Like if a business owner is looking for:

• An HR specialist who’s also also a graphic designer.
• A digital marketing specialist who’s also a bookkeeper.
• An admin assistant who’s also an expert in CAD and speaks Japanese.

While there may be job hopefuls out there who have more than one specialisation, it’s near impossible to find them in a reasonable amount of time, and will agree to work for a smaller salary.

Spending so much time finding a purple squirrel may cause you to miss out on quality candidates who are perfectly capable to achieve your outcomes.

Rather than waiting for a purple squirrel, consider training the best candidate with additional skills that will help them perform even better.

Hire right away

The best candidates are usually off the job market in 10 days. That’s because they’re so in-demand that companies offer them at first opportunity.

The lesson here is that if you dawdle when hiring, you’ll pass up on great people and instead lose them to your competitors, which is unacceptable.

To get around this problem and successfully recruit the brightest into your business, you need to shorten your time to hire.

Partner with us

You can also team up with Remote Workmate. That way, you’ll spare yourself the monumental headache of crafting a job description, sourcing candidates, narrowing down your applicant pool, and performing other recruitment-related tasks while running your business.

With us, you significantly increase your chances of finding the best talent.

You can actually choose from our pool of top candidates right away. Simply click the button below to browse a wide range of profiles on our Hotlist page.