When you’re growing your team, finding the right hire quickly is crucial for long-term success.
Before you start your search to find your superstar, it’s a great idea to take some time to sit down, plan and think about what it is you’re looking for in terms of:
- Attributes.
- Skills.
- Capability and experience.
Simply posting an advert and waiting for the applications to roll in can be a very counterproductive way of recruiting good people.
On the flipside, putting a plan in place is crucial to the quality of your recruitment process and building a strong team.
We find in our industry that businesses that don’t plan their recruitment process find it an arduous task and can make some poor decisions in appointing someone.
Recruitment is one of the most important processes a business needs to focus on getting right. The cost that comes along with a wrong hire can be extremely damaging to a business. You want to make sure you get it right the first time.
Before you start your recruitment process take the time to understand your business and what makes you unique like your culture and your values – these are things that people look for in a company. All of this may sound airy-fairy but – like selling cars – people buy from people.
You can find the most skilled and experienced person, but they must fit into the company’s culture and live its values.
Before starting any recruitment campaign, the most important document is the job or position description.
Why? It’s the base document for setting your new person and existing people up for success. Your performance reviews, coaching discussions, business key performances indicators and job advert all start from here.
Many companies either don’t have job descriptions or haven’t kept them current or relevant. It’s a crucial document that needs to be updated at least once year and ideally around performance review time because that’s the best time to reflect on things and agree on what your people are there to do.
Also, job descriptions are extremely important when you have an employment issue, such as performance management or if you need to do a restructure. The job description is often requested or needs to be referred to in these situations. If it’s out of date and no longer relevant, it can make things tricky for you as an employer or manager because you have no reference point.
When your candidates come to interview for your role, it is so powerful to give them an updated job description because it shows you care about your business and you are prepared.
This also sets the expectation to the candidate about the role and how your business operates – how many times have you heard someone say, “it’s not in my job description”.
So transform your business and your people by getting your job descriptions updated and in place now, and set the expectations early.