Every business must recruit and hire employees, especially when that business is growing. Because hiring employees is such a major investment and risk, smart employers are always looking to improve their approach.

Hiring new employees is a critical part of being a business leader, and it involves much more than simply looking over resumes and conducting interviews. The truth is that hiring good employees can make or break your business.

Recruiting new hires involves risk management, as well, since the investment in time, resources and money can be quite high with each new employee hired. In addition, you have to manage the expectations of the candidates along with that of management and even the prospective employee’s co-workers.

Unfortunately, there are many mistakes and oversights that employers can make that could deter good candidates, or lead to poor hires.

Seven Tips for Ensuring a Great New Hire

However, there are certain improvements that you can implement to help you hire the right employee for your business every time. These steps can also smooth the process and allow you to consider only the best applicants.

Here are seven tips to improve your hiring process:

1. Become an Employer-of-Choice

Building a positive brand as an employer and a desirable place to work is crucial for attracting quality candidates. According to one source, over 75 percent of professionals are potential candidates that are not actively looking for a new position, but are open to offers. By building a positive employer brand you can attract these passive candidates while also reducing your employee turnover by more than 25 percent.

According to a survey by the employee review website Glassdoor, almost 70 percent of candidates are more inclined to apply for a job with an employer that actively responds to reviews, updates its company profile and shares updates on the its culture and work environment.

In addition, Glassdoor's data showed that the company actions that appeal to candidates include being active on review websites and posting accurate information about the company. 

Provided by The Jacobson Group

2. Optimize Your Position Descriptions

Too many businesses have not updated or revised their job requirements and descriptions for decades. What worked in 1987 does not do well today. Long lists of responsibilities and requirements can alienate qualified employees a study found according to The Wall Street Journal.

The study involved 56 job ads that were re-written based on two approaches. One was labeled the "Needs-Supplies" approach and it focused on what the company can do for the candidate. The second approach was the "Demands-Abilities" approach, which put a priority on what the company wants from a candidate.

Of the almost 1,000 applicants involved, those who responded to "Needs-Supplies" job ads were rated higher than the "Demands-Abilities" respondents. The thrust of this exercise is that it pays to focus on what your company can do for prospective new hires.

3. Be Active on Social Media

Not only are prospective candidates judging your company by its digital activity and social media presence and engagement, they are often quite active in the social media realm themselves. What does this mean for employers?

While you want to be sensitive to any legal issues around background check practices, researching a candidate's social media presence can provide valuable insights for an employer. In fact,over 90 percent of businesses actively recruit through social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, among others.

While you should certainly conduct a standard background check on your job applicants, keep in mind that their social media profiles can often provide relevant details about the individual to give you insight to them as a person and a prospective employee.

In addition, monitoring sites such as Glassdoor can help your company keep abreast of your own social reputation and allow you to remedy any issues and forestall future ones.

4. Match the Person to the Job and the Culture

It’s a poor approach to simply hire someone based on their skill set.  In fact, more often than not, skills can be taught. However, a personality and character traits cannot. And these are just as critical to matching a candidate to your job - and your company - as skills and knowledge.

The proper skills are necessary, but if the candidate does not fit will with the nature of the job, or with the culture of your company, then they are not really a good candidate. A poor fit will almost always lead to problems.

This means that you must have a strong sense of your company’s cultural dynamics and understand what makes for an ideal team member.

This also requires that everyone involved in the hiring process must possess a clear understanding of the values and culture that defines your company. The more you know about your prospective employee, the more likely you will be to hire someone who will succeed and thrive in your organization.

5. Optimize Your Interviewing Practices

The job interview is also a function that is sorely lacking in many businesses. The same questions and assumptions are being made today that were already old decades ago. Hiring managers are often over-worked, rushed and - in many cases - uncertain as to how to do it better.

A study by Leadership IQ found that many poor new hires may well be the result of flawed interview processes. The survey showed that 82 percent of 5,000 managers responding reported that the interviewers were too focused on other issues, had too little time or were not confident in their interviewing abilities to notice warning signs.

Leadership IQ CEO, Mark Murphy, noted that this due to the emphasis being on ensuring that new hires are technically competent, and usually at the expense of other factors that are just as important to employee success. Qualities such as emotional intelligence, temperament, teachability and motivation are often overlooked.

Even in smaller companies with limited personnel, it is always a good practice to involve employees and other managers in the interviewing and vetting process. Multiple perspectives can help to assess and round out a more comprehensive picture of a candidate.

6. Assess Learning and Analytical Skills

While not every position may require a high degree of analytical abilities, it can be easily argued that every employee should be able to learn and possess analytical skills relevant to their job function. If change is the only constant, then successful candidates must exhibit an ability to learn, assess, grow and adapt with change.

Use a variety of tests and methodologies to assess the learning and analytical skills of job candidates. While testing candidates can be challenging and time consuming, these tools can also provide additional objective insights and understanding of a candidate. 

7. Involve Your Team

As noted earlier, multiple perspectives can help to give you a more complete impression of a job candidate. Recognizing that your staff knows your company as well as you do, it can be beneficial to use your existing workers to not only vet candidates, but to help find new employees, as well.

You can do this by incentivizing their input with an employee referral program. This allows your current staff members to earn rewards while making your hiring process that much easier. Rewards can be anything from gift cards to cash bonuses, or other perks in exchange for quality referrals.

In addition to providing referrals, your company's employees will be working with your new hires. By involving them in the recruiting and hiring functions, you can expedite the process and improve new employee engagement. Combined with a comprehensive onboarding process, this will ensure that your new hires align well with your current staff. 

Hiring Good Employees is Critical to Your Business

It's never too late to make changes and improvements to your recruiting and hiring process. It always pays to regularly review your practices and policies with the objective of improving your employee development practices.

Your HR management staff is responsible for functions such as payroll management, tax filings, employee records compliance, and so forth. In addition, they are also tasked with the bulk of the hiring functions, as well.

Considering alternatives such as outsourcing is increasingly becoming a cost-effective and strategic option. Accuchex can help you in managing your HR needs, payroll processes, and staying on top of compliance demands. Get your Free Download: Payroll Outsourcing Guide to help you make an informed decision or call Accuchex Payroll Management Services at 877-422-2824.