You’re a new hiring manager and feel a little overwhelmed with your first job search. You understand the high costs of the wrong hire, and you’re worried about making the wrong decision when trying to add to your team. Retraining new employees or going through the hiring process again is not something that you feel there’s even time for. What can you do to ensure you’re making the right hire? How can you streamline this time-consuming process? We have tips that can help.
Top Three Tips for Hiring
- Start with your goals. Define who you’re trying to hire, what their job description will be, and the pay scale. This is the bare minimum for conducting any job search. Finding the right people takes time, especially in this kind of job market, so if you’re setting hiring goals, try not to put too much pressure on yourself. The average time to hire right now is about 41 days—and longer for certain specialties like IT and healthcare. (That is, unless you extend your reach with a staffing company like Pride Staff.) Set the right expectations for your ability to hire to avoid frustration.
- Pick the right interview questions. Your questions for each candidate should basically be the same to make sure you have a fair process. As you’re formulating these questions, think about what you should be asking as you add new hires to an existing team. What kind of personality are you looking for to fit in? Divide your questions between hard and soft skills. In most jobs, the skills can be mastered or taught. It’s the soft skills like leadership, responsibility, and communication that matter as much in this new hire as their technical acumen for the job.As you begin to interview, ask open-ended questions. Practice drilling down on questions, by layering another question that stems from the candidate’s first response. It’s okay to ask clarifying questions as part of the process and the candidate should expect that.Avoid the most common interview mistakes, such as going on too long about the company or even about yourself. Remember, the candidate is interviewing you as much as you are them. Listen just as much as you talk. There are plenty of jobs out there so don’t ruin the candidate experience by coming off as cold or unwelcoming, either. Part of your job during the interview process is to be a candidate ambassador and represent your company in a positive light.
- Work with a staffing agency. If you’re a new hiring manager, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. The job market is saturated with too many jobs and not enough candidates. Pride Staff can pre-vet the candidates for you, freeing you up to only focus on conducting the best and most thorough interviews possible. Our team is highly motivated to proactively search out candidates who are open to work but who haven’t even applied to your company. This is a time-consuming process that most hiring managers simply don’t have time for. But without it, you simply won’t find the candidates you need today. Call on us. We can help.
