Good recruitment decisions will support your business. Poor recruitment decisions can be costly in terms of time, money and wasted opportunity.
Unfortunately, there are no guarantees when it comes to recruitment. Ultimately, until someone starts working for you, you will not be 100% sure if they are right for your organisation. However, there are things you can do to give you a much better chance of making the right recruitment decisions.
The starting point is to have a good recruitment policy and procedure / process. This will also help protect you against potential liability if someone challenges your recruitment decision.
Remember that your obligations as an employer begin with the recruitment process even before you employ someone.
A good recruitment process will save you time as you will be prepared and know exactly what you are doing (e.g. sourcing candidates, interviews, testing candidates etc) and act consistently with candidates. These will help you make the right recruitment decisions.
Once you have recruited your new employee, you need to make sure that you introduce them to the business in the correct way. This is about everything from offering them the position and providing and collecting the right documentation, through to effective induction so that they can contribute and settle in as quickly as possible.
Frequently asked questions
Look at the section on attracting and shortlisting candidates. Attracting candidates is a bit like marketing. You need to make your organisation and the job role attractive. You may also want to think about your internal marketing generally. We put a lot of emphasis on external marketing, but little on how we market to employees. From how you induct people and communicate, to how you present your employee handbook, will say something to your employees.
Look at the interview preparation section and the interview questions template for some example questions. The purpose of the interview / recruitment process is to assess if someone is right for the position and for your organisation. Try to think of questions that will help you to determine this.
You should not ask questions that may discriminate against the candidate, under the nine grounds of discrimination. For example, you should not ask about a female candidate’s if she intends to start a family. You should not ask about religion or belief or any protected characteristics (see Equal Opportunities).
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