How to recruit the right person

I have really struggled to recruit the right type of person for a particular role in my business - can you offer any advice?

The key with effective recruitment is the preparation beforehand. All too often we have a knee-jerk reaction to advertising a vacancy without really assessing what is needed in the business. Use a vacancy as an opportunity to objectively assess what is required, not just the tasks/accountabilities but the right type of personality to fit in with your existing team, which is all too important particularly in smaller companies/teams. In summary, a great job description and person specification will be very clear on what the main focus of the role is, the key tasks/accountabilities, experience required (including qualifications) and key competencies/behaviours.

You will then use this to objectively sift applicants against the key requirements. You will also use it to design an effective recruitment process probably including at least competency based questions and perhaps assessments/tasks at 2nd interview stage.

Furthermore, if the job description is clear, once you have recruited you can then use the key accountabilities as measurables/KPIs for assessment of the individual's performance against the requirements once they are in post.

You can use Psychometric Assessments to look at a behavioural profile and you can even assess this against your 'ideal' profile for that particular role. This will increase the effectiveness of your recruitment over and over again. We use Thomas International Job Profile and Personality Profile Analysis which have proven their worth time and time again.

This is such a wide topic and there are so many ways we can increase the effectiveness of recruitment – we must do this though and put the extra effort in because Recruitment & Selection is not an exact science. We need to move away from the old traditional one-to-one, one-stage interview where you rush through the usual format and get the usual outcome. Invest a little more time at the preparation stage and it will return you better results.

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