How to find and hire great employees

While technology has certainly made it easier to publish job postings to a broad audience, in order to identify the most qualified candidates, it’s typically necessary to implement a process of recruitment that makes use of a number of employment strategies. These processes can help your business not only attract more of the best candidates, but also create a better first impression of your business, allowing you to hire the cream of the crop every time.

From effective networking strategies and referrals from current employees to using social media to your advantage, below we have outlined our top tips for finding and hiring the best candidates for your business.

Networking

Attending industry conferences, job fairs, conventions and other networking events is a great way to not only make useful industry connections, but also find ideal candidates for the vacant positions in your business. Whether you’re a new start-up looking to fill multiple positions for the first time or an industry juggernaut that’s searching for the perfect candidate for a highly specific role, seeking out industry and role-specific events can open up a whole pool of skilled candidates for your business to interact with. 

Create an attractive job description

Just as a candidate would want to make a good first impression in a job interview, an employer has to make a good first impression to potential candidates when advertising a job. Job descriptions are often the first point of contact a candidate has with a potential employer, so making a good first impression through an attractive and well-constructed posting or advert is key. For this reason, it is important to put effort into making job descriptions accurate, detailed, engaging and attention-grabbing. We would also suggest you:

Keep titles specific

The more to-the-point your title, the more likely you are to pique the interest of the best, most-qualified candidates.

Highlight the essential aspects

Make things like core responsibilities, required and desired skills and the pay range as clear as possible. Once again, this will help to weed out unsuitable candidates.

Write an engaging introduction

By providing a brief yet captivating summary of the vacant position early on, suitable candidates will be drawn in from the first word and keen to learn more about the position.

Stay concise

According to research carried out by Indeed, job descriptions that are made up of between 700 and 2,000 characters (roughly 150 - 500 words) attract as many as 30% more applications than those that are longer. With this in mind, keeping job postings short and to-the-point is a good idea.

Seek referrals from current employees

Highly capable employees have a tendency of surrounding themselves with like-minded individuals and other qualified professionals. Although some of your employees may already be sharing relevant job vacancies with people they network with, it can also be a good idea to incentivise this process with bonuses and other perks. An employee referral incentive programme can be a great way to not only attract the best new talent to your business, but also to motivate and engage your existing staff.

Make use of job boards

A jobs board is simply a third-party website or app that deals specifically with employment and recruitment. Posting job adverts on these platforms will help you cast a wide net and attract large quantities of applications. For this reason, if you are looking to fill a junior position or multiple vacancies quickly, posting job descriptions on popular job boards can be highly effective.

On the other hand, if you are looking to fill a vacancy for a highly specialised role, seeking out a niche job board may be a better option. Although sometimes exclusive with expensive posting fees, these boards can help your business target only the candidates that are qualified and save you from sifting through numerous CVs from unqualified candidates.

Use social media

In this day and age, social media is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to recruit new employees. Whether your business is very active on LinkedIn and Facebook, or Twitter and Instagram is more your bag, as long as you have a decent following, social networks of all shapes and sizes can provide the perfect platform to showcase your business and signpost potential candidates to your website to fill out an application.

Even if your followers/connections are not interested in the specific vacancy you’re looking to fill, there is a chance they may know someone who is. Thanks to the nature of social platforms, which tend to encourage content sharing and two-way conversations, job adverts can be passed on with just a click. Additionally, by staying active on all forms of social media and sharing not only job adverts, but also photos, videos and day-to-day office updates, you can give followers (and potential future employees) a glimpse of your company culture. This may be the difference between someone accepting or declining a job offer with your business in the future.

Why hiring the right employees is crucial to an organisation

It’s no exaggeration to say that the importance of hiring the right employees can be the difference between a business failing and succeeding. Alongside the quality of products/services your business provides, the individuals that form a company’s workforce are what make a business successful. From the creative designers that come up with product ideas and the marketers who develop the strategies to showcase them, to the managers who lead their teams and the compliance officers and cleaners that make sure the office is a safe and healthy environment to work in, every member of a business plays a role in its success. This means hiring the best people possible really is crucially important.

Are you protected with employers’ liability insurance?

It’s important to remember that if you’re hiring staff, employers’ liability insurance is a legal obligation. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is responsible for enforcement and can fine businesses up to £2,500 a day if they don’t take out the required cover. The HSE can also fine businesses £1,000 if they fail to display their employers’ liability insurance certificate. You can learn more about this type of cover on our Employers' liability insurance page.