Best practices for recruiting employees


Good recruitment results start with your hiring managers. How to train hiring managers in recruitment best practices

A business can only be as good as its best employees. But in a market flooded with thousands of desperate job seekers both fresh out of college and experienced workers who’ve been “downsized” right out of a job, it can be a challenge to find the perfect worker to fill a position . Your saving grace is going to be your hiring manager. But does he or she know how to go about getting the right person for the job? This is your business. So it’s up to you to lay the groundwork for them to follow so that you come out ahead.



Have a Recruiting Strategy in Place

Make sure your hiring managers don’t just decide to “wing it” when it comes to screening and interviewing potential job candidates. Not having a plan when it comes to hiring can lead to a variety of disastrous results not the least of which is discrimination lawsuits. Knowing what questions will be asked and what information will be given to applicants is key to a successful hiring plan.

Let Employment Candidates Know What You Want

There’s nothing worse than having an employee walk out in the middle of the work day leaving you short handed and behind schedule. But that often happens when a hired candidate comes in to work for the first day or week and has gotten the wrong impression of what is expected of them. Let your candidates know during the interview what they’ll be doing and what you’re looking for in an employee. You may be saving yourself valuable training time and man hours by doing so.

Background Checks and References

When your hiring manager has tons of applications and resumes to pour through it can be tempting to skimp out on background checks and references. But don’t allow that mistake to happen. These key elements can help assure you find the best person for the job. Not every candidate needs to be screened, however. The interviews will help you sort out the proverbial “wheat from the chaff”. Those that the interviewers liked are the ones you’ll want to check to make sure they’re right for your company. In this high-tech world it’s nothing to fake a degree or credentials so be sure to confirm the information you received from prospective candidates.

Making the effort to lay out hiring practices before you get started is the best way to get the kind of employees you need and keep your hiring processes running smoothly. It doesn't matter if you are a staffing agency or a fire department human resources department, or even if you are a government hiring center, it's important to get your HR behind a structured best practices document outlining a road map to hiring better employees.

Read more Human Resources Research Articles

hrVillage presents expert articles across a range of HR topics. Research more HR topics here.