How to Recruit Employees Who Will Thrive at Your Company

26 Oct How to Recruit Employees Who Will Thrive at Your Company

A resume will only tell you so much about a job candidate. It might be all you have at the beginning of the hiring process, but there are some best practices you can adopt to bring in the best candidates with the greatest chances of thriving on your team. 

Here’s how to recruit new employees who will succeed at your company. 

• Target your recruitment efforts. You could place your job positions anywhere you’d like on the internet and social media. But if you’re looking for people with specific skills and interests, it would make sense to do a little research and find the job boards within those communities. Look for associations and organizations that speak to specific abilities, talents or interests and publish your ad there. You’re going to be in front of people who speak the same language you’re looking to speak and will know exactly what you’re looking for and might appreciate knowing your company is one that will value their expertise. 

• Work with a professional. The same goes for recruiting firms (like LeadingEdge Personnel) — some firms target and work in specific industries and are staffed by knowledgeable people who can help identify candidates who will get it. Our recruiters will build a relationship with you and will get to know not just what the position requires but what your company looks for in its new employees, including personality types, values, creativity levels, etc. This means we can help find someone who understands your priorities and will embrace and reflect them, in addition to someone who will be supported and fit in with your company culture. 

• Review your job descriptions. Take a moment to consider the job that’s available. Think about the person in that position now, or the one who just left. What were they like? What did they like about the job? What did they dislike about it? Where were they the most successful and where did they run into speed bumps? Consider all of that and then look at the job description. Does it speak to your company’s culture? Does it fully explain what the person will be doing or what their overarching responsibilities will be? You want to bring in people who will be excited by the opportunity — what do people like about working for your company? What do they like about this specific job? Use that knowledge to inform your posting in order to attract candidates who will be successful. 

• Don’t limit the interview to a conference room meeting. If you’re doing in-person interviews, take the conversation outside the box, so to speak. Walk through the office. Introduce the candidate around, especially to their would-be team, and see how they respond. Do they seem interested and curious or bored? Are they trying to make a good first impression? Are they asking any questions? Take them around the building to places where they might not go, just to see if they’re enjoying the trip. If you can, try to incorporate some social situations, whether that’s joining a team for lunch or coffee, and see whether they get along with their potential team. And then ask your employees what they thought of the candidate after the fact. They’re the ones who will be working most closely with the person. If they get a good feeling, listen to it. If they don’t, take that into consideration as well. 

• Consider a temp-to-perm position if you’re having trouble finding the right candidate. If the position has been open for some time and you’re not finding anyone who feels like a great fit, take a step back. Maybe it would be worth investing the time to open the job up as a temporary-to-permanent position instead. This way, you can work with a staffing company to find a few employees who might be a good fit and you can try each one out for a few weeks at a time to see whether they’re getting up to speed quickly and getting along with the team. You both get a trial run; if at the end of the predetermined duration the person seems like an asset, you hire them and they get the job! If it’s not a good fit, no harm’s done, they’ve been paid and you can move on to the next candidate. 

So much of hiring is hoping for the best. You can glean a lot of information from a resume, but knowing where to look and then having some personal interaction need to factor in before you know whether someone’s going to be successful in your company. It might take a little time but it’ll be worth it, for you and the new employee, in the long run. 

If you’re looking for a little more help recruiting, contact LeadingEdge Personnel. We can help you refine and rework your job position and can help bring you candidates that meet your requirements, and we can do it while saving you time. Call LeadingEdge today and let’s get to work.