How to attract the talent you want

Part 1 of a 3-part series based on The Definitive Guide to Hiring Employees for Small to Medium Businesses

For a small to medium business, hiring new employees can be exciting – and also frightening. When a large organisation selects someone that doesn’t work out, the repercussions are usually minor. But for a small to medium business (SME), a bad hire can be seriously harmful and costly.

This three-part series will take you through the process of finding the best candidates, conducting effective interviews and on-boarding your new hires – to give you the best chance of hiring the right people for your business.

In part 1, we’ll look at writing an excellent job description and sourcing quality candidates.

More: get in-depth insights into sourcing candidates, successful hiring and other elements of recruitment, from the complete eBook.

Writing an accurate job description

Work out who you are

The first step involves a little navel-gazing: it’s all about knowing what your business is and what it has to offer a new employee.

Think about these questions:

• Why does your business exist?
• What do you have to offer the people who work for you?
• What are your organisation’s values and goals?
• What do your employees love about your business?

Work out what you want

The team at Google know a thing or two about hiring great people -copy their tried-and-tested approach to designing a stellar job description.

• Purpose: Highlight the purpose of the organisation or department the employee will be working with, so they know what your company is all about.
• Role: Describe what the candidate will be doing. For example, ‘You will be an integral part of our customer support team ensuring that customers receive top quality, timely and helpful assistance. You will endeavour to solve their problems and maximise the benefit they get from our services.’
• Responsibilities: List the specific deliverables the successful candidate will be responsible for. For example, ‘Resolve all client support queries to the client’s satisfaction within four hours; ‘Deliver client projects on time with minimal errors’.
• Qualifications: List the education, experience and skills required to perform the job. You can break these down further into:
  • Minimum qualifications: These are the bare necessities of the role, often non-negotiable, such as professional accreditations, qualifications, particular skills and experience.
  • Preferred qualifications: While nice to have, these are the non-mandatory skills and experience that your ideal candidate would have and are usually more qualitative.

Consider your language and tone

Ensure your candidates have enough information to determine whether or not they meet the role requirements. Keep language as simple as possible and avoid unnecessary jargon.

Because this is the first impression many people will have of your organisation, don’t hesitate to inject some personality into your description. If your employees consider the workplace friendly, quirky or relaxed (for example), you can let this shine through in your description.

Sourcing candidates

Gone are the days of just listing your job in the newspaper classifieds. Today, there are more ways to advertise a job than you could throw a digital stick at.

We recommend using a suitable combination of the following:

• Referrals – Hiring via employee recommendations often proves to be faster and less expensive that other methods.
• Social media – As a minimum, post a link to your main job ad on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
• Your website – If you have a Careers page on your website, update it with the new vacancy.
• Job boards – Job-seeking websites like Seek often feature a handy candidate management tool, which could save you time.
• Niche job boards – Depending on your industry and the role you’re looking to fill, you may find some niche directories online for listing your ad.

One thing to watch out for when turning your job description into a job advertisement is making it too attractive. You should absolutely aim to paint your organisation in a good light – list all the perks, benefits and growth opportunities that your organisation has to offer. But, at the same time, you don’t want the role to sound so inviting that every job seeker on the market sends in their CV.

Keep the tone professional yet friendly and be clear about what your non-negotiable requirements are; this way, you will hopefully discourage unqualified people from applying and taking up your time.

When it comes to filling in all the details for the job ad, you’ll need all the information from your job description, as well as:

• Selection criteria (required and desired)
• The job location
• Role structure (number of hours per week, how flexible the hours can be)
• Salary information if appropriate (this should include any attractive benefits)
• How candidates should apply (if they should follow the online process or email you directly).

The next stage of hiring is screening applicants and conducting interviews, which will be discussed in Part 2 of this guide next week.