Recruitment (for the purposes of this article = finding and selecting employees) is a complex process. It doesn’t matter if you are an HR manager of a big company, a manager of a department, or an owner of a small company, when recruiting any employees, you need to manage the following 5 things:

• be quite clear about the person you’re looking for
• be able to find suitable candidates
• be able to make them interested, and ‘sell’ them the position
• be able to choose the best/most capable ones
• integrate them into your team and have them adapt to it.

Of course, every single one of these things hides an entire universe behind the words, but in this article we will look into the matter only shortly.

To be clear about the person you’re looking for, is the alpha (or basis) of the whole process. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there. Or, if you like, you will definitely get somewhere, but the question is, whether you will end up where you wanted to be. A recruiter is as good as blind, when they don’t know or understand the above mentioned things. This part is similar to a project plan for building a house. Try to imagine building a house without a project plan. A project plan includes not only complex ideas and visualisations, but also all the details, which define both the house’s constructional as well as visual aspects.

When cooperating with a recruitment agency, it is absolutely necessary that the consultant understands the vacant job posting thoroughly. Only when they know about everything the job involves, can they envision the required candidate with all the key criteria they need to meet. When the consultant is able to imagine the required candidate, they can provide one. It does not matter if you yourself are looking for an employee, or if you are doing so via external cooperation. This part is valid in all the scenarios. The recruiter must understand the job posting, otherwise they are ‘steering blind’, as such.

The search process
The search process can take many different forms, and may include various techniques. Depending on the need (in other words, the clear idea of whom you are looking for), you come up with possible and convenient ideas of how and where to find the sought person. It is basically a hunt, and you must act like a hunter. According to the type of quarry, you choose the hunting district, prepare the right weapons and lures… or you hire a hunter.

Among the most frequently used tools for head-hunting are: job advertising, hunting through acquaintances and contacts, personal connections, schools, databases, employment office, and specialists.

Seeking, targeting and getting the attention of effective candidates your company would like to employ, combines luring, hunting, tracking, selling, marketing, wooing… The ability to attract efficient people, the ability to sell the job posting to applicants you are looking for (i.e. the ones who are worth it), either through job advertising or through a well-written/well-presented job offer (addressed to wanted/targeted candidates), is the key ability. You need to master it in order to achieve great results that come in the form of quality employees.

It is basically a specific form of selling and marketing, and both the final effect and the feedback are considerably dependent on the recruiter’s abilities to choose the right candidate for achieving the intended effect.

The ability to choose the most suitable ones
Companies are comprised of people. They usually have sophisticated processes for all the operations contributing to the making of a product, or providing a service in a way in which the customer receives a quality commodity. Therefore, if the most important asset for a company is people, it is necessary to have an elaborate process for their selection. The ability to ask the right questions, in order to get the needed information, is a key one. It would be unwise to decide intuitively in such important area.

What do you take into account when you want to promote someone? What helps you decide whether you will keep the hired person after their trial period? The answers to these questions will probably be similar. We always need to know if the person can manage and complete the required tasks, projects and challenges, in good time and quality, whether they can cooperate, whether they need to be jumped around, or if they just need to be given a task and they work like clockwork. If you can monitor this person or if you have an experience with them, you will find this out directly. But when you’re choosing a new person, you need to be able to figure it out with the help of convenient questions.

Adaptation
The process doesn’t end with hiring the chosen person. Although, admittedly, if the choice was right, this last part will be easy. However, it shouldn’t be omitted, otherwise your efforts might end up being useless. You need to devote enough time and energy to introducing the person to the company and its culture, people, expectations, working arrangements… and training them. You also need to create a supportive atmosphere for the person (even if they are absolutely new in what they are doing), so that they have somewhere to turn.

Of course, working with people doesn’t end here, but that’s a different story.

Author: Ing Marek Chrastina