Finding a hiring process that is a great fit for your company is an integral part of ensuring that employees are successful, and it can help you build a great company culture. Although there are many ways to go about hiring new people for your company, you should create a hiring process checklist and a hiring timeline that meets your organization’s needs. Before you develop your own hiring process steps, we’ll first break down some key parts of every hiring process.
6 Key Steps of Any Successful Hiring Process
There are 6 essential steps in the hiring process that we detail below. From planning to screening to hiring, executing each step thoroughly will set you up for success in hiring the best people.
1. Planning: Write an Attractive Job Description
As the first step, planning includes understanding the role you are looking for and creating a well-worded description of the role to attract candidates. While understanding the role and creating the role description go hand-in-hand, they are not the same task: the difference is how you market the role.
Before you write the job description, you should have a solid understanding of the role you’re hiring for. For example, whether you’re looking to fill an existing position, or creating a new position, you should define the tasks and responsibilities for that role. Then, when you create a role description, you have to think in the perspective of prospective candidates. What personality traits in candidates might be helpful for your role? How can you make your company culture or benefits more attractive to candidates? A well written job description will improve the results from the rest of the hiring process and can drastically improve the number and quality of candidates who apply to your company.
2. Recruiting Candidates from Inside or Outside the Company
One of the most important aspects to any hiring process you implement is the recruitment process. You can use the recruitment process to look outward to fresh new candidates outside of the company, or you can choose to start with employees who already work at your company. Some benefits to staying within the company in your candidate search are that employees are already familiar with your company and probably fit in with the company culture. Hiring someone from within the company can ease the onboarding time and make the transition more efficient.
However, there are also many benefits to searching for candidates outside of your company. You can find candidates with fresh perspectives and unique backgrounds that can add a lot of value to your company. Oftentimes, newly hired candidates will have extra drive and passion that can expedite the transition of a new employee as well.
Your company can also choose how involved their marketing will be for the role when carrying out the recruitment process steps. If you are looking for a certain type of background in your search, or a specific skill set, you can choose to be more involved and hold events to attract candidates in addition to posting the job online. You can also hire a recruiting firm to help you find candidates rather than having to go through hundreds of applications that applied to the job.
3. Evaluating Candidates: Applications and Interviews
After you build a recruiting process that results in high quality candidates applying to open roles at your company, there are two parts to examining every candidate’s skills. The first level of evaluation is analyzing the job application they submitted to your role. This is where you are able to read through their resume and evaluate their past work experiences. In this round of evaluation, you can narrow down your submissions to a handful of top candidates that you want to learn more about during the interview round.
The second level of interviews is what often results in a longer hiring timeline and becomes a dynamic step for the company and candidate to play by ear. You may have some rudimentary interviews set up for all candidates, but as you have those interviews, you may look to have additional interviews for some candidates, or assign other technical assessments depending on the role your company is hiring for.
4. The Choice: Selecting Your Top Candidate
The hiring process after the interview deals with selecting the candidate that is the best fit. Once you have selected the candidate who fits your proposed role, it is time to conduct background checks to make sure everything is in order before you send out a job offer.
5. Hiring Your Top Candidate: Start Dates and Salary
Once everything looks good, you are ready to send out a job offer to your chosen candidate. To be prepared, make sure to keep in mind a flexible start date and expect that the candidate may want to negotiate their salary. While it’s possible that your selected candidate may have already had that conversation with you during the interview, this may be the first time that you discuss salary with them.
6. Employment Onboarding
Your candidate has now accepted the job offer, and you are ready to start the onboarding process. These final steps include discussing all the necessary employment paperwork with HR and your candidate, so they are ready for their first day. Furthermore, make sure you have all the tasks and onboarding materials ready for your new employee before the start date so that the transition is as smooth as possible.
During orientation, make sure to convey a welcoming company culture. Supporting your new employee from the moment they start will cultivate a sense of community and encourage them to stay passionate about their work.
Final Thoughts
The 6 steps outlined above form a basic structure for the employee hiring process and should help you refine a process that works best for you. Whether you flip some steps around or make it your own, these guidelines will help you find the most suitable candidates for your company.
If you are interested in building a hiring process that makes DE&I a priority, we invite you to download our DE&I Hiring Guide. Also, if you have any hiring or recruiting questions, please feel free to reach out, and we’ll be happy to help.