How to recruit the right people

Employing the right people for your business is crucial but the recruitment process can be tricky. Claire Bainton, managing director of Heath Appointments, offers her top tips to help ensure you find what you’re looking for when it comes to new staff.

1. Know exactly what and who you are looking for

All good recruitment starts with a thorough and realistic job description. Spend some time thinking about exactly what you want a new employee to spend their time doing, and ultimately achieving, within your business. Include the behavioural traits as well as the professional and or technical skills that you expect from a new team member.

2. Create a plan of action

Decide whether you’re going to manage the recruitment process yourself, or outsource to a recruiter. If you are going to choose the latter, make sure you speak to as many relevant companies as possible to find a consultant whose ethos and approach resonates with your own.

3. Design your interview

Time invested in conducting thorough interviews gives you a far greater chance of making the right decision when selecting potential recruits. Always ask every candidate the same set of questions. That way, you can truly benchmark each candidate against previous good and bad interviews.

4. Sell your opportunity

Remember, an interview is not only for you to assess someone’s suitability. It is a two-way process for them to decide whether they would want to work for your business.

5. Listen

Make sure the interviewee is doing at least 80% of the talking. You need to be engaged in the conversation, but try to resist taking over and offering too much of an opinion.

6. Get a second opinion

Wherever possible, involve a trusted team member in the interview process. It is good to have someone to share their thoughts and see a potential team member from a different perspective.

7. Put it in writing

Whether you are a large multi-site business with a dedicated HR team, or an independent showroom, have your offer literature and contract in order and ready to send to your chosen applicant. There is nothing worse than taking time, care and attention to find that perfect new team member and losing them because of a delay in providing paperwork.

8. Have an on-boarding plan

We all know how hard it is to be the new person and we all know how time-consuming it is to find a new team member. To alleviate the first few days and weeks of settling-in time, put together a training programme. It can be as formal or informal as you feel fits in with your culture, but try to make sure the new recruit feels that they can get to grips with the basics as quickly as possible, so that they can get on with the job in hand.

 

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