12 Hiring Principles to Secure the Best Talent

Making good hires can either make or break a business. Ensuring your company has an efficient and cost-effective process for bringing new talent into the organization is at the core of any successful business model. But recruiting is full of challenges that can be difficult to overcome and it can quickly become overcomplicated.

These 12 principles from Indeed Hire will help you secure the best talent, while ensuring your hiring process remains as streamlined as possible:

1. Brainstorm more efficient ways to hire

It's easy to overcomplicate hiring, so make sure every stage you go through is valuable to the long-term goal. A good way to do this is to gather the team and have everyone suggest something to get rid of or change. This can be anything from using third-party websites to holding interview open days.

2. Who knows best?

Often companies will rehash the same job description for years, but this isn't always a productive way of hiring the best talent. Talk to the professionals who will be working most closely with the new hire and find out what they need from someone in this role. This will help you craft a job description that fits exactly what your business needs.

3. Be attractive

If you're looking for the best talent in your area, you need to be sure your advertisement stands out. This means it needs to look good, be concise, and appeal to the specific set of people you are looking for.

4. Put your values first.

Finding a candidate who is a cultural fit for your organization is far more important - and valuable - than the most impressive qualifications. You'll likely want to train them to some degree regardless of their skill set, so focusing your hiring approach around company values is more likely to find you a suitable candidate than simply basing decisions on experience or qualifications.

5. One interview is never enough

Interviews with different stages allow you to see candidates in different environments and on different days, meaning you are much more likely to get an accurate idea of the type of person and professional they are. You can also use these different stages to have them interact with people from all over the company. From professionals who will be on their team to those from other departments, you need any new candidate to be able to communicate with a variety of people, not just the recruiting panel.

6. Hire for the future

When putting together your hiring criteria, consider where your company will be in the near future. The best talent are those people who will grow alongside your organization, adapting to new challenges that come their way. Of course, you need someone who can meet the immediate day-to-day demands, but identifying those candidates who can positively react to change in the future may help filter your list of prospective employees.

7. Diversity is worth its weight in gold

The advantages of having a diverse workforce have been well publicized, but if you want to achieve these, you need to think about the way you are recruiting. There are various ways professionals can be unconsciously biased towards certain candidates. Identifying and acting on ways to combat this, such as having a more diverse recruiting panel, will help your hiring process be more successful.

8. Ignore your gut

Research has shown that the snap impressions we make of people are usually based on existing unconscious biases and beliefs. Without realizing it, you may start looking for evidence to compound your assumptions, neglecting any positive or negative attributes the candidate has. This confirmation bias can lead to major problems with hiring and present a massive problem for companies wanting to have a more diverse workforce.

9. Integrity can't be bought...or taught

Of all the characteristics you are looking for in candidates, integrity should be at the top of the list. Unlike hard skills, integrity can’t be taught. Although this can be a difficult thing to ascertain during the interview process, asking them to talk about their recent work experience and values can help to highlight any red flags.

10. Will they stay?

Does their resume suggest they're only here for the pay increase and will move on in a couple of years? Finding candidates who will be committed to your organization for the long term will help you recruit better talent. This will allow you to find candidates that will be a valuable asset to your company.

11. Will you satisfy them?

Part of understanding whether an employee will stay with your company is knowing whether or not you can satisfy their ambition. How do they want to grow? Where do they see themselves in five years? What are their goals? If the answers to these seem unrealistic for the resources your company can offer, it may be wise to choose another candidate.

A highly skilled and ambitious professional will be incredibly valuable to your company, but only if you can meet their expectations as an employer. If you can't, you'll find yourself looking for another new hire sooner than you’d like.

12. Get second (and third!) opinions

Because you may have made assumptions about candidates or just 'got a bad feeling' about someone, it's a wise idea to have other people look over the information you have about them from an objective point of view. Having someone who is removed from the recruiting process review your candidates can help you find the best talent for your company.