Hiring the Right Person for the Right Position

A business can only be as good as the employees that it is made up of. From the front desk to the CEO’s office, every person within an organization is going to represent it in one way or another. Hiring the wrong person for a job role can have hidden costs for a company and its environment as a whole.

In today’s modern job market, employers are constantly on the lookout for the best candidate out there that checks the most boxes on their skills and expertise wishlist. They are on the hunt for, what they call, “A” players for their businesses. This has made the competition harder and the threshold for skills higher.

But while getting their foot in the door may have gotten tougher for job applicants in some ways, the job market has not gotten any easier for employers, too.

Job seekers nowadays have a relatively wider variety of options when it comes to making the switch from one company to another. Simply put, if they are not happy working for you, they are going to leave.

Finding the perfect fit for your company means that you are able to offer the candidate something they are not getting anywhere else. Gone are the days when only the candidate had to sell their expertise to the employer. Now, as an employer, you need to sell yourself to the right candidate as well. And with unemployment at an all-time low, it is becoming increasingly harder for companies to set themselves apart in terms of the perks they are able to provide. 

It is important to remember that whether it is a small startup or an established business, recruiting the right candidate for the right position can be the difference between a business’s failure and success. Which is why, managers and recruiters need to put the necessary processes in place that allows them to land the best talents.

With that said, let's have a look at the critical steps that you should take into consideration while trying to hire the right person for the job role you need filling.

How to Hire the Right Person for the Right Position

1. Take Your Time

Recruitment can be a lengthy and cumbersome process. It takes a lot of time and energy to fill a position and even after going through everything, there are chances that your decision may not be a success. As a result of this, it can be tempting to skip over some of the steps instead of thoroughly going through the entire process carefully.

However, trying to hire someone as quickly as possible increases the likelihood of you missing some key details about the applicant and ending up with an employee who is not the right fit for neither your company nor the job role.

Accept the challenge and discomfort of a long and tedious process. Slowly going through the entire hiring process makes it more likely for your organization to end up with an exceptional employee.

Taking your time to hire also helps in impressing upon your existing employees that you care about who they work with by taking the time to select a person who truly integrates with the company culture.

2. Write an Accurate Job Description 

It all starts with the job description.

To avoid hiring a person that is not the right fit for the job, you need to make sure that you know what you want in a candidate and create a job description based on that. This is going to save you considerable time and effort as an inaccurate job description can draw unqualified candidates and make your job harder than it needs to be.

Aim to write a job description that clearly conveys your requirements to the candidate without getting too wordy or complicated. Include bullet points, state clear objectives and requirements, and list job responsibilities. This would help keep your job description specific, to the point, and unique.

Always remember to keep things short and sweet without skimping on the important details!

3. Screen Resumes Carefully

While many employee-employer relationships never work out due to attitude differences, the truth of the matter is that oftentimes, new hires don’t pan out because they simply don’t possess the required skills needed for the job role.

This truly matters because the wrong candidate can turn out to be an expensive mistake for a business.

Not only would the company be paying for the cost of hiring and training a replacement, but also the loss of revenue and termination costs as a result of a suboptimal hire.

This hiring of a bad candidate usually happens due to a hasty screening of resumes.

It is important for employers to be thorough in their screening. They should verify any references and follow through on other important interview steps to make sure the whole screening process is carried out effectively.

Many companies nowadays make use of AI software for talent discovery to comb through individuals and their relevant skills for the job.

4. Start with a Phone Interview

Effective communication sits front and center of almost every job role. It allows for better collaboration and eliminates any unnecessary problems. Most job roles nowadays require a considerable amount of time communicating – specifically on the phone. Making calls to attract new customers and retain present ones has become a core part of many job positions. Through the phone is also one of the most prominent ways to provide great customer service.

Therefore, you need a candidate that can effectively communicate over the phone. A great way to test for that is to conduct interviews over the phone. This would give the applicant a chance to showcase their over-the-phone verbal skills and help you make the right choice.

5. Evaluate Them Face-to-Face

A resume is often a candidate's first impression for you. Once you like that first impression, there are many other things to consider.

As a manager, you should always go beyond the resume. Invite your potential employee for a chat. Consider what they have to offer in terms of personality, attitude, energy, fit, and interests.

This would allow for a more in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the candidate by making their body language and facial expressions part of the equation.

6. Always Verify References

While assessing a candidate, you should trust your instincts. However, make sure to never rely on your instincts alone, even though you may be tempted to.

Skimping on the verification process has the potential to create substantial problems down the road for both the employer and the company environment.

Therefore, always verify any references provided by the potential employee and pull a thorough background check. Get as close to the reality of the job seeker’s references as you possibly can.

This step is not only for the verification of their professional competence. This also serves as a way to understand how the candidate works and what kind of a presence they are to work with. Don’t be afraid to ask their previous employers the critical questions that would help you determine their work ethic and capabilities.

7. Learn to Trust Your Gut

While it is good practice to hire someone based on the evidence of their capabilities, sometimes your gut can come in handy.

There are instances when no matter how impressive an applicant’s professional achievements are, your gut just isn’t quite sold on them. More often than not, there is a very good underlying reason why your instincts are pushing you away from hiring the candidate. You might not be able to pinpoint it but your gut feeling is often a result of prior experience that ended badly.

You may not be comfortable rejecting a potential employee outright based solely on your gut. However, use your intuition as a signal to dig deeper about the applicant, gather more information, and evaluate them further.

8. Learn to Look Beyond Experience

To successfully land the right employee for your business, you may need to look beyond mere experience and hard skills at times.

By widening your horizons and scaling your recruitment efforts to include employees with lesser experience but more potential, you would be expanding your candidate pool. Doing this would make it more likely for you to come across the sort of talent that fits perfectly with your company culture and the job role.

There are many benefits to hiring for potential instead of only experience. Employees with lots of potential are much more driven and motivated to grow in their job roles. Candidates with little to no experience also bring with them a fresher perspective and an ability to ask questions and shake things up a little. 

Another thing to note here is that hard skills can be taught. This means that if you hire an employee for their potential, they can be trained and taught any skills they may be lacking. However, soft skills are not the easiest thing to train an employee on. Trying to get a new employee to work on changing a personality trait is somewhat of an ambitious ask. The chances of a person changing their attitude are pretty low and this can affect your entire staff’s productivity along with your company’s branding.

If you find a candidate that has all the right skills and experience but their personality and attitude do not align with your organization’s culture and core values, you need to stop pursuing them.  

9. Make the Offer    

On the basis of your entire recruitment and interviewing process, you should finally have a clear idea of the candidate's personal and professional capabilities for your business. You would be able to identify what is important to the candidate confidently. Is it higher pay? More time off? Remote working?

Whatever it may be, consider what perks are easier for you to provide as an employer or manager. Keep those in mind when presenting the right candidate with an offer. This is going to impress the applicant and make them more likely to accept your employment offer.

Why is it Important to Hire the Right People for Your Business?

Hiring the right person is essential for your business. A bad hire can cost you a lot more than just money and resources. And while it is true that hiring can take time, money, and effort, doing it right eventually translates into saving money for your organization in the long run by hiring a worthy candidate. 

It is important that you hire the right people for your business for a few reasons:

• It saves you time by not constantly worrying about whether your employee is getting their job done or not.

• Your company is able to cultivate the best customer service due to an employee who is dedicated to their job.

• There are lower costs attached with turnover if you hire the right person for a job role.

• It would allow your business to experience exponential growth due to hiring a candidate who is invested in the company.

• It helps with building team morale across the company.

Final Thoughts

Hiring the right person for the right job is not the easiest thing in the world to do. Just as you are looking for the right employee, the candidate’s also looking for the right employer. Therefore, you should aim at creating a hiring and interviewing process that serves as a two-way street where both parties could benefit from each other.

Make sure you do your job properly by discussing the company culture, both during the recruitment process and then again while onboarding. Do not be afraid to talk core values with a potential candidate and show them what your business stands for. This is going to serve as a useful starting point for the candidate to truly understand what your expectations are with their job role and how they can help you achieve them.