Finding the perfect person to join your business and be a great fit with the team; as well as being capable of doing the job is no simple task. At Hive, we have developed our recruitment process over the years to help us stack the odds in our favour to find the best addition to our team. We’ve made mistakes over the years but we always make sure we learn to improve our processes for the future. Here is what we’ve learned and how you can apply it to your practice.
THE JOB ADVERT NEEDS TO BE CLEAR AND RELATABLE
It’s hard to define some roles into a snappy one side of A4 required for some job sites. We always start our job adverts with an introduction to the company and a summary of what they can expect being part of our team. The next sections are practical, including the roles and responsibilities and the requirements to apply e.g. qualification, experience.
The job advert needs to include a salary and if you’re not sure you can put a range. You should also include any benefits of working at your practice. We have a page on our website which outlines the benefits of working at Hive Business.
Don’t overthink it. Some businesses can get away with informal language or listing boozy Fridays as a perk – don’t try and be something you’re not, keep your job advert on brand so you attract the right people.
SIFTING THROUGH APPLICATIONS NEEDS A PROCESS
If you’ve ever posted a job on Indeed or similar, you’ll know that often you get a volume of applicants who aren’t relevant. It’s important you have a systematic approach to reviewing the CVs (which I recommend doing as and when they come in to avoid a mammoth task later). Dedicate a member of your team to use a scoring sheet to shortlist the candidates.
If you don’t already have a scoring sheet, they’re easy to put together. Put the names of the candidates and then a section for each element you want to rate them on to see if you want to interview them. Decide on how much you would score each element e.g. for a cover letter you might score 4, if it’s tailored to your practice score a 6. Then you can see the candidates who score the highest and should be interviewed.
We score on a variety of measures such as qualification, experience and application quality (was there a tailored cover letter for example). For some roles, we also include things like evidence of innovation or professional development as that could be key for the type of tasks they would be doing. It helps to filter the applicants for the ones who sent a poor CV or are based abroad and have no cover letter mentioning relocation.
THE INTERVIEW PROCESS NEEDS TO BE ROBUST AND THOROUGH
Have a template for your interviews and ensure the people interviewing have taken time to review the applicants CV/ Cover letter ahead of time. For each interview, tailor a few of the questions to their application so you can address anything you notice in their CV e.g. gap in employment or why they chose to leave a position if relevant. For each question, score the response and at the end you can see who scored highest.
Also, include a section where you can make some notes about the interview in general such as were they on time or was there anything in the interview that would be relevant to why you’ve decided to proceed or not. You want it to make sense to someone who wasn’t in the interview why the decision was made.
I recommend having two people holding the interviews, a decision maker and a team member who will be working closely with the team member. It’s so helpful to have another opinion and especially when from different sections in the business. You can debrief and discuss how you felt the interview went and run through any observations you had from the answers given.
ONBOARDING YOUR NEW RECRUIT NEEDS CLARITY AND SOMEONE RESPONSIBLE
I’ve written about this in the past. The first few weeks when an employee joins you is so important for setting the tone of what’s expected. Set out a series of onboarding tasks and meetings for the new recruit to feel fully integrated into your business.
USE THE PROBATION PERIOD
This is never a nice realisation, when the new recruit isn’t working out. If you have a robust enough recruitment process and onboarding, you shouldn’t need to wait 6 months to figure out if someone is the right fit. In order to do this, make sure you have all the paperwork and documentation in place to ensure you’re following the correct procedures. Seek advice from a HR professional if you’re unsure about managing this side of things, sometimes they will offer to hold the meeting for you.
FINALLY, A WORD TO THE APPLICANTS
Although it is on you as an employer to find the right person, reviewing applications can be pretty laborious and frustrating. If you’re applying for a job any time soon, here are some words of advice from us:
- Put the essentials on your CV – if you don’t include any qualifications or you skip out loads of work experience you’re not giving a full picture.
- Write a cover letter – It doesn’t have to be pages long but some key points of why you’re applying and a word or two about how you’d be a great fit (referring to the job description) is so invaluable to your application. People with a decent cover letter will likely be interviewed!
- Be aware of how your application looks – Job sites like Indeed are great for one click applications but take the time to upload a pdf version of your CV rather than using their profile builder, it looks much more professional.
- Read the job description – Make sure you’re applying for a role that matches your capabilities or if not, explain in your application why you are applying for the role that you may not seem a perfect fit for.
- Be human – It’s easy to forget when you’re pinging off applications that there is a human at the end of it who is going to read it in detail. I’m sure AI has some application in this space but for the most part a human will be reading what you’ve written. Make your CV easy to read, keep it brief and factual.
Recruitment is a minefield and over the years we have faced a variety of challenges that we now have solutions for. If you’re wanting help growing, training and developing your team so your practice runs smoothly, get in touch.
