By Maurice Gilbert, Founder and CEO of Conselium
… Building off the previous three tips for better recruiting practices, here are four more guidelines collected by executive search firms to ensure that companies hiring efforts are as efficient and successful as possible.
Referral Incentives
When it comes to networking, there is one invaluable tool that companies tend to forget about more often than not; their employees. Whether or not a company has yet to develop their own professional network or not, they can still reach out and tap into their employees personal networks by sharing information about open positions and job descriptions with them. As effective as this technique can be, it is made all the more so when companies begin offering monetary incentives to their employees should one of their referrals result in a hire.
Thorough Interviews
The most important stage of any hiring process is the interview. However, most companies fail to conduct these procedures as thoroughly as they need to in order to ensure that a candidate is as highly qualified as they are looking for. To be a thorough as possible employers should begin conducting follow up interviews as they narrow the candidate pool, incorporating further interview techniques, such as having current employees participate as a means of effectively assessing a candidate’s cultural compatibility, as well as using shadow sessions, both to test this cultural fit as well as allowing the candidate the opportunity to get a firsthand feel for the position to see if they feel they are really up to the job.
Ethical Assessment & Red Flags
Throughout the interview process, from any initial phone interviews onward, employers need to keep one extremely important principle in mind. When it comes to hiring an individual, rather than assessing the candidate for reasons that they should be hired, interviews should make an active effort to find reasons that these individuals should NOT be hired. This should include asking questions that aim to assess certain aspects of a candidate’s moral and ethical code to ensure that their beliefs and motives are in sync with those of the company. Also, red flags should be sought which may indicate less easily noticeable flaws, for example, if the candidate seems unwilling to accept responsibility for past failures or speaks negatively about most of their previous bosses.
Selling the Position
Given the state of the economy in recent years and its effect in increasing the difficulty of finding and attaining quality employees, it has become more important than ever that employer be able to effectively sell a candidate on the position once they have found the perfect individual. This, however, is a difficult issue for employers to achieve properly as there is a difficult line that must be maintained between selling a position and effectively assessing a candidate. However, this is where companies can use their internal brand, compensation and benefits programs to their advantage in demonstrating to the select individual why they should decide to work for you as opposed to the competition.
The executive search and hiring processes are a necessary evil for companies if they hope to maintain their workforce and ensure their own health and longevity as an organization. Difficult and time consuming as these practices may be, it is important that employers remember the importance of caring out these procedures effectively the first time through so further resource will not be wasted by having to unnecessarily repeat these processes when a bad hire is made.
Published by Conselium Executive Search, the global leader in compliance search.
