Recruitment Process Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Employee Recruitment!

<span class="grey-callout">This article is a roadmap of the recruitment process our advice covers, allowing you to dip into relevant sections.</span>

Why Recruit Anyone at All? Follow My Six Steps of Recruitment Before You Do Anything Else

• Don’t recruit unless you’ve considered all the other options. If you don’t get this right, you’ll lose out. This article reveals my Six Tests of Recruitment, which will help you make the right choice.

Don’t Recruit the Wrong People for the Life Stage Your Business Is at Right Now!

• Recruit the right people for the stage of your business life cycle.
• Measure the ratio between gross profit and staff costs to ensure you’re adding value with each hire.

Who’s “Right” for Your Business, Right Now?

• We all want to recruit top talent, but we mustn’t get obsessed about this. I identify three categories of employees and encourage you to recruit Great Performers where possible.
• The concept of a Great Performance Profile is introduced to describe a Great Performer. This is vital to your recruitment and to the ongoing performance management of your staff.
• Assemble a Recruitment Team because great recruitment should never come down to a single individual’s decision.
• Learn how to conduct a sanity check to see if the right person really exists.
• Pay employees based on the contribution they make.

How to Attract Enough Applicants

• Ensure sufficient coverage of the market to gain quick feedback about whether the staff you’re trying to recruit actually exist.
• Learn how to prioritise various Applicant Attraction Channels, such as employee referrals, online job sites, flat-fee recruiters, recruitment agencies, JobCentre, social recruiting, recruitment blogs, Job Fairs, and HR consultancies.
• Applicants can be anywhere, so you need to advertise almost everywhere.

Choosing Enough Online Job Sites

• Think like an applicant to find the best online job sites and not be held back by company dogma such as “this is how we’ve always done it”.
• Learn about product ranges, upsells and CV databases that will help you select the best job sites.

Writing Your Job Advert

• Write a compelling job advert, sell your job by answering the question, “If I’m your ideal candidate, why should I join your organisation rather than a competitor?”
• Follow a scientifically-proven, optimised job advert structure to convert more jobseekers to applicants. This includes recommendations on tone, headings and formatting.
• Understand why including your company name and logo can be a bad idea.
• Never, ever redirect jobseekers from a job site to your employer career page – unless you want to lose 92% of applicants!

Shortlist Applicants Every Day

• Shortlist applicants every day before your competitors do.
• Look for the potential in applicants by asking, “Why should I interview this person?”
• Learn what action to take with your applicants and what to do when none are good enough.

Call Candidates

• Waste less time with unsuitable applicants by using Telephone Interviews.
• Follow a Telephone Interview script to quickly disqualify unsuitable applicants.
• Introduce a Promise of the Reference Call to encourage applicants to give honest answers.
• Then correctly arrange interviews with suitable candidates.

Conducting an Interview

• Learn how to choose the right location.
• Understand when video interviews are appropriate and how to overcome common pitfalls.
• Learn simple, probing and rapport-building techniques.
• Ensure you sell as well and make applicants feel excited about a future with your organisation.
• Consider if psychometric tests are relevant after the first interview.

Use Structured Interviews

• Discover who to include in your Interview Team because two heads (or more) are always better than one.
• Use Structured Interviews because they’re insightful and simple to do.
• Remind candidates about the Promise of the Reference Call and pre-close applicants so they’re more likely to accept your job offer.

Job Simulations and Work Culture Assessments

• Simulate important parts of a job to assess if candidates meet your expectations.
• Use a Work Culture Assessment to identify if they’ll be a good fit in your organisation.

Making the Right Recruitment Decision

• Score applicants against a Great Performance Profile.
• Use the Delphi Technique and a Pre-Mortem to ensure you make better quality decisions.
• Ensure that everyone on the Interview Team feels able to give their opinion.
• Learn to say “thanks, but no thanks” to unsuccessful applicants in a professional manner.
• Learn what to do if you decide not to hire anyone.

Fulfill the Promise of the Reference Call

• Take references from past employers before making a job offer. This avoids the situation of making an offer, then getting a bad reference but feeling compelled to continue because it feels impossible to withdraw the offer.
• Ask the candidate to arrange for you to speak with the referee.
• Follow a straightforward Reference Call script to uncover the information you need.
• Only after these steps should you decide whether to make a job offer or not and avoid a costly mis-hire.

Making a Job Offer

• Ensure you have a plan B in case your offer is declined.
• Learn how best to respond if a candidate declines, is unsure or wishes to negotiate.
• Expect counteroffers from a candidate’s employer and learn how to manage such a situation.
• Wrap everything up with a written offer, final Reference Call with a current employer and possibly background checks.

Keep In Touch With Candidates

• Learn why candidates may accept a job offer but never start – so much can go wrong!
• Reduce the chance of this happening by maintaining engagement through building relationships and preparing the candidate for starting their new job.

Retention Reduces Recruitment

• Create a culture of care and appreciation for staff.
• Induct new hires to ensure they have the best possible start and help foster relationships with managers and workplace buddies.
• Use the Great Performance Profile to induct, measure performance, identify training opportunities and promote.

If the Worst Happens

• Because recruitment is never foolproof, learn how to handle resignations and make counteroffers to your employees to give yourself more options.
• When an employee leaves, gain important information through an Exit Interview.
• Use the Five-Step Turnaround Process to give Poor Performers the chance to improve.
• Most importantly, focus on the remaining staff or more of them may leave!

Implementing the Great Performance Recruitment Method

• Create Great Performance Profiles for every role and start benchmarking employees.
• Replace Poor Performers where practical.
• Expect resistance to change and know how to manage it.