3 Tips for Hiring Great People

By Carolyn Hughes, VP, People, SimplyHired.com

Finding someone to just fill a seat at your company isn’t hard. But finding great people—the ones who fit with your culture, who share your vision, who can make immediate and lasting contributions—can be very difficult. This is true for small and large companies, as the right people can transform any organization.

Here are three ways you can better source and hire truly great people for your company.

1. Diversify your sources. There’s no one perfect way to hire a great employee. It takes a combination of tactics, and with each position the mix will be a little different. Make sure your recruiting strategy includes many different resources to find talent.

When you’re trying to hire, don’t forget to first look within the company to see if someone could be promoted or has the necessary skills to transfer into the new position. Another way to use internal sources is to offer incentives for employee referrals.

Online, you should post your job openings on job posting sites and possibly with your industry’s associations, as well. Other ideas include creating a video ad to post on YouTube, reviewing profiles on LinkedIn, or announcing job availabilities on Facebook, Twitter or other social networking sites.

You can target passive job seekers by posting positions in the places where they congregate online. News sites such as The Washington Post, BusinessWeek and CNN Money, for example, all offer job postings. Think about the type of people you want to target. What associations do they belong to? What social media do they use? Are there events on sites that aren’t recruiting related but may give you insight into potential talent? These alternative sources can help you to further target the best candidates for your company.

You never know where you’ll find a great candidate. In line at the grocery store, chatting with a neighbor, contributing to social networking sites, or visiting a job board. When it comes to recruiting, the sky’s the limit.

2. Build a better career site. If a job posting is the ambassador, your career site is the embassy. A career site is the section on your company Website that houses current job opportunities and general information about working for your company. Like a job posting, your career site is another opportunity to express company personality and professionalism, and let potential hires know what they can expect if they come to work for you.

Make your career site easy to navigate so the application process is pleasant and job seekers gain a favorable impression of your company. Think about incorporating personalization, videos, and social media to help sell candidates on your workplace. Take a look at the career pages for well-branded companies such as Apple and Zappos.com for some inspiration.

3. Assess, measure, and optimize. All the work you’ve done to recruit won’t be as effective if you don’t have ways to measure what recruiting efforts work for you—and which ones need to be improved or replaced. By creating a rubric or set of standards, you can ensure you’re not wasting time in your hiring process.

If you don’t already have internal metrics, consider creating a hiring rubric. Here are areas to consider:

• Internal hiring plan:Do you hire as you go, or do you have a clear vision of where your company is heading and what type of talent it will need to get there? Who will those employees be? Are they contract or seasonal staff, interns, or permanent employees?
• Job postings and career site: How complete are your internal job descriptions? How well do your job postings and career site help job seekers find information? How well do they reflect your company’s personality?
• Hiring sources:Where do you find your applicants? Have you diversified your hiring resources? Do you track which sources are bringing you the best candidates?
• Application review process:Do you look at applications as they come in or do you batch them and create a deadline for submissions? How do you decide who makes the first or second cut?
• Interview process:Do you have a set of job-specific questions to ask? Do you have a process for who will conduct interviews? How many interviews are needed to hire for a specific position?
• Hire/reject methodology:Do you check references? Do you conduct background checks? How do you decide which interviewee gets the job?
• Onboarding methodology:How do you get your new hire up to speed on the first day? Do you need to set up equipment, passwords, parking or security cards? Is training required? Do you have all the proper hiring paperwork in place? Can you answer benefits questions?

Learn More

This article was adapted from SimplyHired.com’s “10 Tips for Hiring Great People.” For more ways to effectively find and hire great candidates, visit www.simplyhired.com to read the full piece. How do you make sure you’re making a strong hire and not just filling a seat? Share your best tips for other hiring managers and recruiters to learn from.

Carolyn Hughes is vice president, People, at job search engine SimplyHired.com. She has more than 15 years of human resources and recruiting experience and previously consulted as talent acquisition lead for Jobvite and SurveyMonkey and held HR leadership roles at LiveOps and Overture/Yahoo. She earned her bachelor’s degree in economics from University of California, Santa Barbara.