There are many ways to go about putting out the feelers so that you can find suitable candidates for employment with your company. You may try placing ads with Craigslist, local periodicals, on online job sites like Monster and Career Builder. Or you might hire temp agencies or head hunters to provide you with listings of pre-screened applicants. You could also join (or host) job fairs, set up internship opportunities through local colleges, and of course, open up job recs for internal applicants before going public. But despite all of these potential inroads for applicants, you might find that you simply aren’t getting qualified candidates, or that the people you hire don’t tend to work out. So whether you’re running a small, independent business or a major corporation, you might want to try a few methods for improving your hiring practices.
Although you’ve probably got a lot of resources providing you with applicants, you may not be using the right ones. For example, Craigslist will certainly provide you with an inbox full of people clamoring to fill positions, but many will not be suitable candidates. You’ll be lucky to get even a handful of people who have the education and/or experience you’re seeking. The reason is that serious contenders for such jobs simply aren’t perusing Craigslist in pursuit of gainful employment because they don’t expect to find it there. What you might want to do if you’re looking for a higher caliber candidate is post your ads for employment with industry-related job sites that charge for membership. Qualified individuals are often willing to pay for a crack at top job opportunities, so you’ll not only have access to better applicants, it could also significantly reduce the number of résumés you must sift through.
Of course, getting the right people to apply for positions with your company is only half the battle; from there you have to determine which ones are most likely to fit into the workplace dynamic and contribute to the overall effort. Someone that looks great on paper simply may not be right for your particular office environment. This is why the interview process is important, and here you can likely improve your hiring practices, as well.
You might start by overhauling the standard questions that tell you little more than what you see on the résumé. And you should consider how different types of tests can help you. Aside from standard tests to ensure that candidates have the right skillset (typing speed and accuracy, for example) and that they aren’t using drugs, you might also administer personality and psychology tests (like the Myers-Briggs indicator) that will give you information about how candidates are likely to react in certain situations (if they should have the opportunity to steal from the company, for example, or if they discovered that another employee was engaging in illegal practices). While you can certainly rely on New York, Paris, or London based recruitment agencies to bring you suitable candidates from across the globe, there are steps you can take on your own to ensure that you find a better quality of applicants and that you hire the ones that will work out best for your business.