Recruiting and hiring the right employees for your company is critical to its success, but being able to locate the right experts in your field can be tough. How can you sort through all of the resumes that you receive and get through all of your interviews to be absolutely sure you’re making the right choices? Continue reading for a few tips that will help you determine just how effective your recruitment process is, and to find ways of improving it, if necessary.

Using Too Many Recruitment Agencies is a Bad Idea

 

Do you think that hiring more than one recruitment agency will increase the odds that you’ll find the employees you need more quickly? The truth is that the opposite can happen, and you can actually end up extending the amount of time it takes to find quality job candidates. The recruitment companies may try to compete against one another to get you as many candidates as possible, regardless of their true quality, and you’ll spend a lot more time sifting through all of the resumes, too. Therefore, pick one recruitment agency to help you and stick with them once you figure out the quality of their services.

Don’t Handle All of the Paperwork Alone

 

Another reason why your recruitment process may be faltering is because there’s simply too much paperwork to handle. This can hold you back and confuse you, as well as make you too disorganized to recognize the most qualified candidates in the stack of resumes on your desk. To avoid this problem, use an applicant tracking system that will increase the speed and organization of the hiring process. With the right system, you’ll be able to get rid of paper applications altogether by posting jobs online, getting referrals, communicating with applicants, and more.

Test the Candidates You’re Thinking of Hiring

 

Because many people lie on their resumes, as well as during interviews, the only way to really know how qualified they are and what skills they’re really proficient in is by testing them.

You can do so with role-plays, during which you pretend to be a client, for example, who is being sold a product or service by the job candidate. See how the candidate would execute their job in the field before you even hire them by role-playing the scenario in your office. This will give you a direct glimpse into what a candidate’s capabilities really are, especially when they are put on the spot unexpectedly.

You can also test your potential employees by using written exams to gauge their knowledge about a particular topic or about the type of work that they would be completing for you. Written exams can be done on a computer that automatically grades the tests for you, saving you time and effort.

Simulations are yet another great way to test your employees. This is very similar to role-playing, but it may actually involve a technical simulation on a computer. For example, you may have your employees simulate how they would behave using a certain software program to execute a specific task. Or if you are hiring an IT person, you may ask them to simulate how they would troubleshoot and fix a problem.

No matter what you choose to use, these tests will help you more easily determine which candidates really have what it takes to work for you and which ones exaggerated their abilities. 

Write a Clear, Detailed Job Description

 

It may be tempting to just put together a quick online job posting, but this will only result in mismatched candidates applying for the job. To make every candidate know exactly what the job entails and what skills they need to have in place, you have to clearly define the position’s requirements. This includes writing out exactly what level of education and experience a candidate needs, as well as the attitude, behavior, and skills they’ll need to get hired. Doing so will make the process of interviewing candidates a lot easier because you’ll be able to focus on what they can bring to the table.

Once you have these tools and tactics in place, you should notice that your recruitment process improves and the employees you hire have what it takes to drive your company forward. The key to any successful business lies not only in the process it uses to get things done, but also in the people that are actually completing that process. Therefore, spend a bit of time thinking about the ways that you can improve your recruitment process and only hire the best.