Hiring the wrong employee can be a time-consuming and extremely costly endeavour for your business. However, sometimes it can feel like discovering the best candidate takes even longer. After all, you need to do your due diligence throughout the process and spread your net as far as possible to find the right people.

The problem you face is that you are already busy motivating and managing your current workforce, so taking even more time to recruit candidates is not what you want. How, then, do you hire the right person in less time?

Disclaimer: Unfortunately it actually takes longer to hire the right person, than it does to hire the wrong one. But if you go through this process it will save you time and heartache in the long run!

 

Know exactly who you are looking for

The hunt for the perfect person to hire is one that should begin long before you've even started to sift through the options by looking at different applicant profiles. It's entirely possible to take on worthy candidates through a "play it by ear" approach, but doing some preliminary groundwork by nailing down your specifications in advance will save you a world of frustration in the long run.

Before even looking at any applicant profiles, make a list of all of the most desirable characteristics in your ideal type of people to hire. Specify the top-priority attributes, followed by the second-tier attributes and all the way down to red flags. The better defined your profile is before your search begins, the more time you'll wind up saving yourself in the long run.

 

Do your research

Once you have your profile established and found an applicant who seems to fit within the lines, you've got to make sure that you do your due diligence properly.

When you're looking at their stated skills and credentials, make a real effort to look into these things and uncover as much information about their experience as possible. It's not against any employer regulations to make an effort to dig deeper into the worthiness of your applicants by requesting extra information about their credentials. Use LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and all other social media platforms that you can leverage to get as much information as possible.

Hire for cultural fit, and train technical skills

While having the hard skills is certainly important, you've got to make a point to hire someone who fits the cultural mold of your company first and foremost.

Even an applicant who ticks off all the boxes in terms of their technical capabilities, can still prove troublesome on the team if they're not personally willing or able to conduct themselves in a manner that exemplifies the standard that you've got in mind for your business.

It's not that you can't have applicants who have personalities of their own, but at the same time, you'll be best off with applicants who have a real natural affinity with the kind of workplace culture that you've established - this isn't just a matter of personal preference, but basic workplace cohesiveness as well.

 

Actually check references

While not all applicants will have the same quality of references, make sure that you don't just stop at taking their word for the references that they put on their resume. Make sure that you go the extra mile by actually diving into the contact information that applicants provide; doing this will give you a much stronger case to determine your applicant's' credibility. Even a set of references that seem strong on the surface, can very easily have been established through a commissioned service. It’s sad, but true.

To guarantee that your applicants' references are genuine, you're going to want to open up a dialog with these people and ask as many detailed questions as you can to confirm that they are indeed exactly who they say that they are.

 

Go beyond a simple interview

It's one thing to just have a simple interview with your candidate, but if you want to go about the process as efficiently as possible, it pays to go the extra mile. Instead of just keeping things confined to the standard single interview format, you'll do the process a lot more justice by conducting interviews in different segments and categories.

Progress the applicants through a series of interviews that continually examine their character in behavioral ways and advance only the ones who consistently meet expectations.

Consider the different personality and behavioral dimensions that mean the most to you in terms of professionalism and cultural fit. Then use these standards to conduct independent examinations of your applicants on multiple occasions so that you can come away with the most objective point of view possible by the very end.

 

Conclusion

Hiring the right person, ironically, is a matter of spending a bit more time so that you wind up wasting less time.

The quality of the candidates you bring on board, will almost always be directly correlated with the amount of effort that you put into examining their profile from every single dimension available.

Know what you're looking for, do your research through social media, hire for cultural fit, investigate references thoroughly, and go beyond the standard interview process to hire the right person in less time.