Tips for Finding the Best Candidate for the Job

Finding the best candidate for the job does take time. You’ve spent countless hours crafting the right job ad, screening and vetting hundreds of candidates and now you’re down to the final list of the best candidates. There is always the possibility that you will end hiring the wrong person, which can result in a full series of negative consequences.

The wrong person will prove to be a nasty cultural match, not qualified, or unable to perform their duties. You may spend tons of your time and money coaching them, only to find that they are not a decent match and you end up searching for another candidate.

An impressive list of qualifications and intensive work experience is definitely necessary, however, these are not the sole things you ought to contemplate when recruiting potential employees.

Find the Best Candidate for the Job for Free with freerecruit.co.za.

Use these seven tips to assist you in selecting the best candidate for the job.

1. Create the perfect job ad and attract the best candidate

Because there are so many companies advertising the same roles, you need to make sure your online job posting gets noticed. Make sure your job ad title stands out from the rest. You want a candidate to read the job title and get them to apply for the job.

Creating the best job ad is vital in making sure only the best candidates apply to your job vacancy. You will reap the rewards if you take the time and make the effort to create the perfect job ad.

“I’ve learned over the years that, when you have really good people, you don’t have to baby them. By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things.”

Steve Jobs

2. Create an Accurate Job Description

Posting an online job ad only to receive hundreds of unsuitable applicants or none at all, is frustrating. For this reason, it is important that a recruiter provides the correct information and attracts the best candidate for the job. You may feel that you don’t have the time to write a proper job description but in the end, this will save you a lot of time.

The importance of accurate job descriptions extends way beyond this as well. A job posting with a clear job description improves employee retention because employees will have a good understanding of their duties and responsibilities. A concise job description portrays a high level of expertise. This in turn can facilitate in attracting quality candidates.

Your job description should provide a summary of the role and expectations for the position.

3. Prepare good interview questions

Coming up with the best interview questions to make the right hiring decision can save you time and make the hiring process easier. There are tons of standard interview questions but recruiters need to think out of the box. Most job seekers have been through interviews before and are prepared to answer most of these questions parrot-fashion.

Ensuring that a candidate has the required skills set is important of course, but it is crucial to find out what kind of person they are and if they are a good fit. Asking the right questions can help you better evaluate your candidates and make the best hiring decision for your business.

4. Talent And Cultural Fit

Hiring candidates who not only possess the skills and experience to excel in a role but who are also a good cultural fit is critical when recruiting. During the interview process, you need to ascertain if the candidate’s core values align with your own companies core values. If employees are a good culture fit, they’re more likely to stay.

Clearly and effectively communicating your company’s culture throughout the recruitment process is fundamental to finding employees who will thrive within your business. Considering how costly employee turnover can be for a company, hiring for culture fit as part of your recruitment strategy is essential.

5. Experience and Accomplishments

Understanding the candidate’s past experience and accomplishments can help to gain insight about their strengths. All jobs have a set of duties and responsibilities, so finding out about a candidate’s prior experience can help you gauge how prepared they are for the role. Even though you can see their experience on their resume or cv, their ability to summarize their work history and relate it to the current position will give you an idea if they can meet your company’s expectations.

When the candidate is describing their work history, make sure to pay attention to their voice and body language. Do they sound confident? Does it sound natural or robotized?

It is also a helpful way to understand how the candidate has engineered their professional career and how they celebrate their victories.

“Your human talent is your most important talent.”

Carla Harris

6. Soft Skills

When it comes to choosing the best candidate for the position, another key area of the selection process is to find out what soft skills they can bring with them. Soft skills are defined as personal traits that enable a person to perform effectively in the workplace.

Soft skills, as these traits are called, include traits such as:

• Intuitiveness
• Communication and teamwork
• Professionalism
• Learning skills
• Time management skills
• Problem-solving skills
• Conflict resolution skills
• Strong work values

Before interviewing your candidates, put together a list of soft skills that your ideal employee should possess. With this list at hand, rank each soft skill to ensure you understand which skills are more important than others, and whether the lack of certain skills is a dealbreaker.

While you may not be able to find a candidate that ticks all the boxes, a quality candidate will possess at least several soft skills that will help them excel in the position.

“Hiring is the most important people function you have, and most of us aren’t as good at it as we think. Refocusing your resources on hiring better will have a higher return than almost any training program you can develop.”

Laszlo Bock

7. Reference and Background Checks

The difference between a reference check and a background check is, a background check is performed to investigate the educational, criminal, and financial records of a candidate. A reference check looks at the candidate’s personality traits and how they have performed in the past.

To confirm that you have selected the best candidates and do not throw your workplace off balance, you shouldn’t forget to follow up on the references they provided on their resume.

Conducting a background check can help you determine if the candidate is suitable or not for the position. Background checks can provide you with information such as:

• Any criminal record
• Traffic violations
• Bad credit history
• Misrepresentation regarding education or work history

When doing the reference checks make sure that they are relevant to the job. If the reference is a family member or friend this may be something to pay attention to. Social media could be a sensible place to find information, however, that does not mean that you should evaluate the candidates exclusively based on this.

It is very important that before you conduct any background or reference checks you have consent from the candidate.

It is difficult to terminate the employment of an unsuitable employee, therefore, recruiters need to do reference and background checks in order to avoid hiring the wrong people.

We understand that as a recruiter time is of the essence. The recruitment process can be costly too. At freerecruit.co.za we have created a free recruitment platform with all the features you can expect from a premium paid site. As a recruiter, you can create a free account and post your jobs for free or view our database of qualified candidates cvs. You can create bookmarks and private message candidates. To get started go to www.freerecruit.co.za or contact us for assistance.

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