Recruiting Best Practices: An Expert Weighs In

Employees are a business’s most valuable asset. They are the engine that powers your organization, the people who perform the work and make the company go. Hiring the right individuals for the right roles is absolutely critical.

With that in mind, we asked Kari Thompson, Weiss & Company’s Talent Acquisition Manager, to share her thoughts on best practices for human resources and recruiting professionals. Here’s a sampling of her advice.

Transparency Matters
“As a recruiting professional, it’s your job to fill open roles within your organization with people who can perform the job duties successfully,” Kari says. “Recruiters search for candidates with the expectation that those candidates provide clear and factual information about their education, prior work history, and professional skill set. And job seekers expect the same degree of transparency from potential employers.”

To establish transparency during the hiring process, Kari counsels recruiters to focus on three key points:

Competition – Be honest about how many people are being considered for the role, and how many rounds of interviews the candidate should prepare for. Try to provide an accurate timeline for when a final decision will be made.

Salary & Benefits – Always be forthright about wages and benefit packages during the interview process, as early as possible. It’s always best to be proactive during the hiring process, as that’s what is fairest to the job seeker.

Job Fit – Every job has its challenges. When a candidate inquires about potential challenges in the role, it’s best to set realistic expectations and disclose those challenges from the get-go. Doing so will not only benefit job seekers, but it will also lower turnover for the role and help you find the best fit.

Timely Communication – Looking for a new job can be a stressful process. If the role you’re recruiting for gets filled, it’s always best to inform the remaining candidates as soon as possible so that they can continue their job search.

Hiring is a Team Effort
“While HR professionals are tasked with finding and retaining high-quality talent, they should not be the sole decision makers during the hiring process,” Kari says. “Companies with exceptionally low turnover typically engage in a process known as collaborative hiring – a team-based approach in which the department stakeholders who will be working with the chosen candidate participate in the hiring process.”

She advises recruiters to consult directly with department heads when writing job descriptions for any given position. It’s also prudent to loop a position’s direct supervisor into the interview process so that all parties can get a feel for personality and company cultural fits.

“As a recruiter, gauging compatibility between a job candidate and the team they’ll be working with is always easier when you have feedback and direction from a current member of the team,” Kari points out. “It’s just common sense.”

Establish a Hiring Hierarchy
In an ideal world, every candidate would satisfy every requirement for the position they’re seeking. But of course, this is never the case. Yet the job needs to be filled, whether you find the ‘perfect fit’ or not.

“It’s the recruiter’s job to determine the best candidate based on the reality of the candidate pool,” Kari observes. “For example, Candidate A might have the ideal educational requirements and prior work background, but Candidate B seems like a better fit from a company culture perspective. Which is most important?”

The answer, she says, lies in establishing a “hiring hierarchy” – that is, a system of weighting candidate assets and traits to help inform the final hiring decision. Each role should have a list of non-negotiable ”must-have” traits and secondary “nice to have” traits, as well as more subjective input from key stakeholders within the organization. “That doesn’t guarantee you’ll find the ‘perfect fit’,” Kari finishes. “But it greatly increases your chance of finding a good one.”