When you’ve got a job opening, it’s important to get it filled as quickly as possible. As you start to collect resumes or job applications, you’ll want to ensure that you’re exploring the candidates in detail. It can be a mistake to offer a job in haste without performing some background information, first.
Call the References
One of the first things that you should do is call the references that a person has put down on their resume. These may be past employers or close acquaintances. By making the calls, you can be sure that a person is being honest. Ask a few questions about whether a person worked at a specific location and held the specific position. Then, find out about their time-management skills, leadership skills, and more.
Not all references will be chatty. However, you should try to speak to at least two references to give you a better sense of who the candidate is and what they can offer your company.
Conduct an In-Person Interview
While it may be easier and faster to conduct interviews over the phone (or not at all), it can prevent you from learning a lot about a candidate. Often, you’ll get resumes mailed, applications dropped off, and candidate information sent over electronically. You have no idea about the person behind the details.
Do they maintain an acceptable corporate image?
Are they comfortable answering your questions?
Are they asking interesting questions about your company?
There are so many things that you can learn about a person’s professionalism, drive, and overall comfort when you meet with them in-person.
While it might take a little longer to get through the hiring process, it can ensure you get the best possible candidate for the job.
Ask for a Presentation
It’s becoming more and more common to ask candidates to make a presentation. You can set a time limit of 5 or 10 minutes for a candidate to present on a certain topic. You can also leave the topic open-ended to see how creative a person can be.
A successful interview presentation can tell you a lot about a person, including:
- Public speaking skills
- Organization
- Professionalism
- Communication
- Creativity
Particularly if you are down to a few candidates that you can’t decide on, this can be the easiest way to learn more about what the candidates will be able to provide.
Run a Credit Background Check
You want to make sure that anyone who will be maintaining fiscal responsibility is capable of doing so. A credit background check is routine in today’s day and age. It can tell you more about a candidate to determine more about their credit history. You’ll learn more about their financial assets, their obligations, and more.
Once you’re confident in a candidate’s financial stability, it can make it easier for you to offer them a job.
Verify Their Identity
It’s important to know who it is that you’re hiring. While you’d expect everyone to be honest, not everyone is. Running an ID verification allows you to check such things as their name, their address, and their date of birth. Particularly when you want to ensure that a person is of legal age, this can be a great way to do it – and there are plenty of ways to verify without being obtrusive.
Establish a Consistent Hiring Process
What you do to hire one person should be the process that you follow to hire all future positions. Consistency is critical to ensure you get the same results. Plus, you don’t want anyone who was hired to feel as though you made them jump through additional hoops than others had to do.
Your hiring process should ensure that you know who a person is and whether they have the background that they say that they do. You can run a credit background check when they’re going to deal with money for further peace of mind. Plus, with various ways to conduct interviews, it’s a chance to learn more about a candidate than what you can read about on your computer screen.
When you put more thought into your hiring process, you’ll get more qualified candidates – and that can help you to get your business to the next level.
