Tips on How to Find the Right Employees

Unless your company’s name is Google or Apple, finding and retaining the best employees is probably one of your greatest challenges. With social media and so many job search engines available, you wouldn’t think it would be that difficult to find the right candidates. But, with unemployment rates at a record low, it makes finding people more difficult, and it’s likely that the best employees are already employed. So what is a hiring manager to do? At American Recruiting and Consulting, we have 35 years of recruiting experience and we want to share some tips on how you can find the employees you’re looking for — even if it seems like you’ve exhausted all of your options. Read our post and then give us a call to find out how we might be able to help you.

Understand the Time Commitment

How many times have you heard the words “we’re expanding business” in some way, shape, or form? Maybe your company is opening a new office, adding a second shift, or expanding distribution outside of the U.S. Whatever the case, the decision is usually followed by a sense of urgency to start hiring — often in a very unreasonable time frame. The best way to hire people who are unqualified and not a good cultural fit is to accelerate the hiring process.

Before you find yourself in this situation, first make sure that you understand the time commitment involved in finding and hiring qualified candidates. And also take into consideration that it may take longer than it did 10 years ago. Next, do everything you can to communicate the time that will be needed to complete the hiring process with your superiors. Including some statistics on how much money it’s worth to hire the right employee the first time around also won’t hurt. We understand that there will be times when you don’t have the amount of time for the hiring process that you’d like, but hopefully those instances will be fewer when you take a proactive approach.

Write Accurate Job Descriptions

One reason for attracting unqualified job candidates is lack of detail or inaccuracy on the job description. Writing a job posting asking for someone who is a fast learner with a college degree and good people skills can just about sum up the majority of job seekers. In this day and age, it’s assumed that you’ll need to have people skills — whether your position is client-facing or not. As long as your job involves working with people, you should have people skills.

What employers should do, however, is clearly communicate the job requirements, bypassing any vague descriptions. If there are particular technical skills that are needed, make sure to include them. Does this job require 50% travel? Make sure to state this as well. Being as clear and concise as possible can help you find the right job candidates and avoid having to start the process all over again when your new hire quits because the job wasn’t what they thought it would be.

Use Current Employees as a Resource

This method might work in your favor if current employees enjoy working at your company and can speak highly of it to family and friends. But if employee satisfaction is anything but stellar, don’t expect them to speak your praises. However, if you have a great company culture and people hold you in high regard, employees will happily tell family members or others in their social network.

Ask Thoughtful Interview Questions

After you’ve gathered a list of potential candidates that appear to meet the criteria on paper, it’s time to really get to know them during the interview process. Feel free to ask some of the general questions — like “tell me a little bit about yourself?” and “what are your strengths/weaknesses?” — but save the majority of your time for more thought-provoking questions that will give you insight into whether or not this candidate will be a good fit. The following list are some examples that will help find the quality candidates you’re looking for:

• Tell me about your greatest achievement
• Tell me about your biggest failure
• Tell me about a time when you overcame an obstacle
• Tell me about a time when you had a difficult time working with a colleague
• Is there anything in your past that you wish you could go back and do differently?

Thought-provoking questions like these will give you valuable insight into what motivates a candidate, how they handle difficult situations, and how they solve problems. By taking your time and not rushing through the interview process, you can find the top caliber employees you’re looking for.

Get Help From a Professional

If you’re struggling to find qualified candidates, or you’re finding it difficult to find people for hard-to-fill positions like executive leadership, it might be time to get help from a professional. You can spend countless hours and resources, but if you don’t have the right tools, your money could be wasted. At American Recruiting and Consulting, we can help you find and place exceptional talent by using our research recruitment tool called Recruitment Intelligence™. This tool empowers employers to gain access to the 85% of passive candidates in the market.

Looking for help finding a consultant, contract employees, or IT professional services? We can help with that too! Bring us your recruiting and consulting challenges — well accept them head on. For us, nothing is impossible!

Are you looking for a job recruitment agency? Whatever your business needs, we can help. We have locations in more than 20 cities across the globe and we have successfully placed over 50,000 candidates. Don’t stay awake at night wondering how you’re going to fill your open positions, work with a company that was voted as one of America’s best professional recruiting firms, two years in a row. Visit our website or give us a call to learn more. We’re here to help you succeed!