Hiring Basics 101: An HR Managers’ Guide

Who says the people of the Human Resources department in your organization is responsible for recruitment? Specifically, it is the job of the hiring manager. The other people on the team help out with other organizational processes concerned with employees, employment and compensation. If you are tasked to take up this position, then selecting the best people for the right jobs rests on your shoulders.

 

When it comes to finding the best talent, your skills combined with know-how that complies with these pointers are necessitated:

 

• Want to get the right candidates? Provide the exact job description. By exact, all the details pertaining to the position’s main responsibilities should be included. Taking the time to do this eliminates the risk of attracting the wrong applicants, let alone hiring the wrong candidate. Make it thorough yet simple that it can be easily understood by both recruiters and applicants. Be particular with position descriptions. Review it thoroughly before posting.

 

 

• Beforehand, determine the exact criteria and guidelines to be used for assessing candidates. Expect that even in the most competitive labor market, you will receive beyond the expected number of resumes needed or expected of any particular position you post on the company website. If you have the right criteria and guidelines, you gain the following advantages:

 

• Easy spotting of the best candidates during the initial online screening and
• Save on time spent screening resumes online

 

Note: Because you are the hiring manager, you can assign people to do the screening. However, the main responsibility of ensuring that they do their jobs right is solely yours.

 

• Make sure that you have already prepared the questions to ask in the interview. With this, you must also determine the answers you expect, which are directly related to the criteria set for the position. It will also be helpful to jot down the other important details you have to take note of that will help indicate if the candidate is worthy or not. Take time to go over your questions. Keep in mind that only through asking the right questions will you get a direct indication of a candidate’s qualifications.

 

• The most important commodity in majority of companies is having a pool of talented people. They are considered as the most crucial element for succeeding in the industry. But many hiring managers make the mistake of writing out job descriptions based the required skills and not talent. Remember: a skill is learned competence. With interest and proper training, any one can acquire a particular skill. But talent is innate and much harder to come by. There are far more skilled people than there are talented ones. A naturally talented candidate can accomplish more and become more efficient when trained to learn new skills compared to a mediocre or non-talented one.