Recruiting remarkable people – part 3

The recruitment process can be broken down into seven steps.

Step 1 – clarify your brand

Step 2 – create a position agreement

Step 3 – develop a broadcast strategy

Step 4 – create the advert

Step 5 – review and evaluate the responses

Step 6 – meet candidates

Step 7 – follow up

Meeting the candidates can be the hardest and most worrying part of the recruitment process, especially for young businesses who do not have much or any recruitment experience.

A common mistake can be trying to sell the company and/or the position, especially to someone with a strong CV who looks the part. To avoid this, consider having two meetings.

The first meeting would be a group meeting, where you invite 20 of the best candidates based on a review of CVs.

You prepare and presentation and ask people who are interested to stay for a 10-minute one-to-one interview. In the interview you can ask three questions which will help you identify who to spend more time with.

Questions could be:

• What did you hear in the presentation that resonated with you?
• How would our company help you move forward in life?
• How could you help our company achieve its goals?

If you didn’t want to host an event/presentation at a hotel you could host an online meeting or conference call. You could have 10-minute one-to-one calls with candidates on the phone.

As with marketing, an important part of recruitment is filtering. You will invest heavily in a new employee and they will either enhance your brand or diminish it.

You are looking for people to emotionally connect with your message. These candidates will stand out a mile. If you don’t find people get emotional about then perhaps you need to revisit your brand message and culture.