As a business owner you have grown your business to the point where you need to hire staff to take it to the next level. So have you ever said to yourself, how do I go about hiring staff for my business? Is there a specific process to follow? Can I just put up a posting and hope and pray that star employee will see it and apply?
We could on and on with the many questions running through your mind right now. Well you have come to the right place because I will share with you the plan that MKS HR uses when it hires employees for its clients.
Why do you need plan instead of just posting the job and hoping the “right person” applies? It keeps you on task and it helps you set aside time in your schedule to complete the hiring process properly. This is so important because with the labor market we are in, there are a lot of candidates to consider. Yes you have a lot of choice but don’t forget these candidates are interviewing with other companies (not just your competitors either), and can get snapped up very quickly. So that’s why having a plan in place is critical to not lose out on that stellar applicant.
So here is our plan:
- Create a targeted job posting & post it: Create a targeted job posting with a targeted and simple job title (see April’s blog post for more on this). Choose a proper place to post your job that will reach the kind of applicants you want to apply. We use Indeed to post jobs for our clients because we get a great response in terms of the number of applicants along with the kinds of applicants we are looking for. There are many places to post, so take some time to research or ask some of your business colleagues for what ones they use.
- It’s been posted, so now what? Allow the posting to be up for at least 1 week, including the weekend because there are still some candidates that are job searching then. Briefly take 15 minutes to scan the resumes to see if you are getting the right kind of applicants. Do they have the experience or other qualifications that is required? Are they too junior or senior for the role. If there aren’t enough “right” candidates you may want to look at making some small adjustments to the posting. Is it clear enough about what the person will be doing in the job, is it too long to read? Is it clear as to how to apply? Make the adjustments you need and then leave it up for another week and see the response you get.
- Screen the resumes: Here you are reviewing the resumes to see what kind of experience the applicants have.
- Do an initial Phone Screen/ Phone Interview: As a business owner time is critical and there’s nothing worse than having it wasted. A common trap to fall into here is that you set up face to face interviews and 10 minutes in you know they aren’t right for the job. Now imagine if you had 3 or 4 interviews like that. This is why we recommend to do a brief 10 minute phone screen with some candidates that catch your eye.
- Schedule Face to Face Interviews: This is the meat of the recruitment process as you are interviewing to see which candidate you would want to hire. Please do not take this step lightly because if you can ask the right questions based on what you are looking for, then you should be able to make a hiring decision from here instead of starting all over again.
- Reference Checking: Check 3 employment references. The reason to check employment references (past Supervisor/Manager) is because past performance is a good indicator of future performance and here’s why. One time I interviewed a very good candidate, but during one reference check I found out some information that made us decide to not hire the individual-had we not done that we could have hired the wrong person. If you are wondering what questions to ask, here are the same questions MKS HR uses for our clients. If your applicant for whatever reason doesn’t have 3 employment ones ask for 1-2 employment references and the third can be a personal reference.
- Offer of Employment & Paperwork: Any employee you hire (1 or more) has to sign and send back an offer letter along with other paperwork. This includes a new hire form that gets their address, phone number, date of birth, email address, SIN#, and emergency contact information. The other forms your new hire will need to fill out is updated tax forms which can be found here.
- First Day of Employment: Congratulations you have hired an employee for your business! You are done, right? Not really because the next thing you need to do is ensure your new employee is set up for their first day of work and on. Is their work email set up, their computer/laptop, is it configured properly, do they need keys or a security pass to access the building, etc. And most importantly what sort of training will they do on their first day? Are there policies and procedures they need to review? Do they need to meet with anyone else they will be working with? Will there be a person that they can shadow with to learn the job? We recommend you create, an on boarding plan for your new hire for the first few weeks of employment. Please remember once you have hired staff, the next step in the employee life cycle is to keep and develop them!
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Are you feeling slightly overwhelmed about hiring your first employee or need help with your hiring plan? Contact MKS HR Consulting to book a Discovery Call as we are happy to help.