Streamlining the Hiring Process: A Guide for Small Businesses

December 10 2021 - The ideal candidate has the potential to kickstart the success of a small business, but they can be hard to find if they even truly exist in the first place.

Small businesses often need to keep an incredibly close eye on their finances, and in many instances, the time-consuming nature of the hiring process can prove to be a formidable challenge.

To help you streamline your hiring efforts and hopefully save you some money in the process, here is a short guide you may find useful.

Develop Reliable Skill Assessments

A rudderless interview can be a huge time waster, which is just one of the reasons why coming up with a reliable set of skill assessment questions is so important.

The best hiring assessments can get to the bottom of what makes a candidate shine out from the rest, and if you are able to standardize your process, you stand to save yourself a great deal of time.

This way, every candidate gets an equal chance to prove why they are the right fit for your business.

Automate Your Onboarding Process

It can take a while for candidates to get settled, regardless of who they happen to be. After all, they are entering a new environment, and they deserve your support if you hope to give them the best possible start.

Micromanaging this aspect can be long-winded and throw your schedule into disarray, especially if you happen to be a small team that needs to direct their attention elsewhere.

By automating the onboarding process, you can let your new hire take matters into their own hands without necessarily having to get involved too heav">ily.

Ask for Feedback

Interviews should be a two-way street. Questions need to be asked not only of the candidate (obviously) but by the candidate.

Asking them for feedback can help you optimize your interview setup and pretty much every other stage of the process too.

Encouraging feedback is essential in business, no matter what the topic happens to be. Learning to take on constructive feedback can help you grow as an interviewer and an employer.

Write a Clearly Defined Job Advertisement

It is somewhat unfair to blame a mismatched candidate for their application if your job posting itself is not clear enough.

Identifying crystal clear parameters in the advert is essential in attracting the right candidate. A few inclusions worth adding to your advertisement include:

• What your company actually does, and what its values are.
• What type of specific experience is required, and what qualifications you would prefer them to have.
• What the ideal candidate should be looking for in a job.
• Where you expect the company to be in the next few years.

This is just a simple set of guidelines to be getting on with, and as long as you make sure to let the candidate know what you fully expect of them, you should be alright.

Last but definitely not least, remember to disclose the pay. Failing to do so looks extremely suspicious, and this is a quick way to lose out on potentially great candidates.

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