BUSINESS BASICS CHANNELS

ABC's Site Search

Employee Selection and Recruiting:
Increasing Your Success 

In today's business environment, every company must compete for the best employees. How well you recruit, interview, hire and orient new employees will have a tremendous impact on the success, effectiveness and productivity of your organization. Having a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) on your team can make the process much easier and more effective. Administaff, one of the nation's leading PEOs, offers the following advice to increase your success in attracting the right candidates and retaining the best employees.

The process of recruiting the best person for the job actually begins before the recruiting even starts. Before you begin looking, make sure you have a thorough, well-written job description. Include knowledge, skills and education requirements, level of responsibility, physical requirements, customer contact, supervision received, supervision of others and decision- making authority. At the same time you are defining the position to be filled, make sure you have an accurate picture of the environment you will be putting them in, including your management style, the company culture, and how this new employee may impact the rest of the staff. Once you have done this critical "homework," you are ready to find candidates for the position.

Where to Look

If you haven't already considered members of your existing staff for the position, they are certainly worth reviewing. Sometimes the best candidates are right in front of you. Word-of-mouth is also an effective method of attracting applicants. But if these no-cost approaches don't fit the bill, try advertising, the most common recruiting method. The ad must appear under the appropriate listing, and it must be carefully worded. The shorter the better -- but make sure the critical information is included.

Screening & Interviewing

If your outreach effort hits its mark, you may find yourself in the enviable position of reviewing dozens of resumes. Sort through the stack, eliminating any applicants who do not meet the basic requirements of the job. The rest should move into a pre-screening process where a list of prepared questions are asked to determine if they are qualified and available and if they are a match for the job's salary range. Ask the top applicants for a written explanation of why they are qualified as a top candidate for the position.

As you develop your short list, the personal interview will be the most important step in the process. Before conducting a face-to-face meeting, insist that the interviewee complete, sign and date a job application. A legally sound application will authorize you to check references and conduct pre-employment drug screens. It will also notify the applicant of the consequences of falsified information and your rights to terminate employment at any time.

You and the applicant need to prepare for the job interview. Have all the information about the job that the candidate will need in order to make a decision. A list of legally sound, job-related questions should be prepared in advance that will be asked of every candidate to ensure consistency and equity when evaluating finalists. Do not ask questions pertaining to race, color, religion, age, sexual orientation, national origin or disability. Make sure you've reviewed the candidate's application and resume before starting the interview. Once the interview begins, let the candidate do most of the talking (about 80 percent). Your job at this point is to be a good listener.

Hiring

If you have followed these steps carefully, you should now be in the fortunate position of choosing from a handful of very qualified, motivated and interested candidates. One more screening step will support your final decision. Reference checks with previous supervisors are essential to identify strengths and weaknesses, reliability and punctuality. Pre-employment testing can be a valuable tool as well, providing information about the individual's personality, attitude or skills. Once you've reviewed all the critical information, you have on last important source to consider: your gut instinct.

Retention

Keeping good employees is as important as finding them. Fortunately, many of the procedures started in the recruiting process will translate into employee retention.

---

Every employer should follow these basic procedures to find and keep the best employees. Many of the steps can be handled by a Professional employer Organization, allowing you to concentrate on the details of hiring that concern you the most. With Administaff, virtually the entire process can be handled by the PEO, from writing the job description to screening applicants to actually conducting the initial interviews. Testing tools are also available to support your hiring decision.

As good as any of us may be at our job, we can all benefit from professional support. A full-service PEO like Administaff can help you recruit and retain your most valuable resource -- the employees. Administaff is one of the nation's leading Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs), serving thousands of business owners and tens of thousands worksite employees across the country. Administaff was named to Fortune magazine's 1999 list of "America's Most Admired Companies," ranking among the top three businesses in the Outsourcing Services category. For more information, visit Administaff on the World Wide Web at http://www.administaff.com or call (303) 370-1313 or (888) 370-0115