While technology has allowed recruiters to reach out to more candidates than they could otherwise, it has also meant that recruiters have to shuffle through thousands of resumes and hundreds of interviews before they are able to select a candidate for the job.

But, oftentimes, the picked candidate doesn’t prove to be an ideal fit for the organization. The result of the long recruitment effort yields a suboptimal outcome. Picking the wrong candidate harms both them and your company. It harms the candidate because being selected for the wrong position undermines their true potential. It harms your company because there is little return on the money and time you invested in your recruitment and the wrongly selected candidate is unlikely to stick around for long, forcing you to go through the whole recruitment process all over again.

However, with the right strategies and with the help of a little bit of creativity, such risks can be avoided and the candidates’ best fit for the position can be selected. Taking insight from the top industry experts, we present you with 10 little known tricks to hiring the right candidate.

Let’s get started…

1. Treat Them Like Customers

Remember, if you want to hire the best candidate for the job, you have to treat them like a customer. A well-qualified person is likely to have job offers from other organizations as well. How they were treated during the requirement process is likely to play a major influence in ultimately which company they may choose to work for.

In addition, lackluster response to the candidate’s willingness to work for you is likely to give them the impression that your company is non-serious and unprofessional. This can result in them deciding not to give their best in the interview. It may also undermine your future recruitment prospects as past candidates will only have something negative to say about your company to people in their circles.

From screeching to in-person interviews, treat candidates like you would treat customers. Give them proper courtesy and be respectful of their time. Make them feel comfortable and welcomed. Be sure to also provide candidates with your organization’s contact details should they have any queries or concerns.

2. Consider an Employee Referral Program

People like to network and acquaint themselves more with others in working in the same or similar industry. Create a comprehensive employee referral program that encourages your existing employees to refer people in their network for any current job openings. The better the referral rewards, the more motivated they will be in persuading the best talent in their personal networks to join your company.

3. Utilize the Power of Social Media

If you are not incorporating social media into your recruitment strategies, you are greatly missing out. This is especially true when it comes to recruiting younger candidates. Social media allows you to easier share and notify your network or audience of any job openings. People who follow and engage with your social media account are also likely to be more eager to work at your organization if they are looking for work or a job switch.

Social media also carries a positive externality even if you are not directly recruiting candidates through it. Posts of your day-to-day office life, events and what you do is likely to make people better aware of your organization culture and values, encouraging like-minded candidates to apply at your company.

4. Don’t be Careless with Job Postings

Job postings are often the first and most crucial part of the job recruitment process. However, quite a few recruiters fail to give the proper time and consideration needed to create a compelling job description.

Investing in the effort can go a long way in helping your recruit the right candidate for the job. Here are a few tips to consider when creating a job posting.

Have an Accurate Title

Keep the title as accurate and clear as possible. This way you are likely to attract more people with the right qualifications and not be spammed by irrelevant resumes.

Create a Compelling Overview

Get the potential applicant interested in the job opening and your company by opening up with a compelling overview.

Be Specific But Also Realistic

Be specific about the qualifications you desire in the candidates but also be realistic in whether enough applicants will be able to meet them or not. You are unlikely to attract a lot of good candidates if you list desired qualification like this example in your job posting:

Ideal Candidates Should:

• Have 3-4 years of work experience
• Between the age of 22 and 25
• A Master’s degree

In fact, it could be worse; you might attract more people who have no idea what they are doing are or are not serious about the opening.

Instead, set realistic expectations. Consider this listing:

• Ideal Candidates Should:
• Have 2-4 years of work experience
• Between the age of 22 and 28
• A Master’s degree will be preferred

You have expanded your potential candidate pool but not so much to dilute the pipeline.

Keep it Concise

Keep the description between 700 to 2000 characters. This should be enough to give potential applicants all the required information that they need to know but not so much that it becomes exhausting to read and make sense of.

5. Include an Existing Employee Already in a Similar Position in the Interview Process

Often the best person to interview a candidate for a particular opening is an existing employee working in the same position or industry. This type of individual will know what the ideal traits would be for a candidate to excel and fit into the company’s workplace environment.

In addition, they will be better able to answer candidates’ queries about the day-to-day expectations and work requirements for the job they are being interviewed for.

6. Network with Potential Candidates at Industry-Specific Events

Career fairs are not the only events in which you should meet and network with professionals. Any event specific to the industry in which you are recruiting is an opportunity not to be missed. We can relate to this with our own experience when finding software engineers for one of our clients.

One of our team members attended a university organized hackathons and was able to gain contact from multiple participants. The event itself allowed assessing firsthand the skills of different individuals he was networking with.

When a few months later, we got a call from a client for urgent hiring, we quickly went through these contacts and phone the relevant individuals to send us their resume and a cover letter. We were able to candidates that perfectly matched the requirements of our clients and soon enough, our picked applicants secured a permanent position in our client’s company.

7. Check Their Past

When screening candidates, consider their past. Are they the types that don’t stick around for long in any position? The possibility is that such individuals may be risky to hire as they would likely hop to yet another company when the opportunity is good enough for them.

An ideal candidate that shows commitment and steadiness in their past work history. Someone who has shown themselves to stick with a company for a long enough duration is someone who is likely to do the same with your company. It may also be an indicator that they are serious about their career and if they are leaving their past company, they might have a concrete reason for doing so.  See also: The 11 Biggest Reason Why Good Employees Quit

8. Consider People Who Can Add Value to the Team

Good candidates aren’t just those who are good at their work but also those who influence others around them in a positive way. Hiring a highly skilled candidate that is toxic as a person would do you more harm than good as any increase in productivity that they would bring would be offset by their negative influence on the rest of the team and their performance.

The majority of modern-day works requires a person to be an effective communicator and team-players. These are traits that are becoming essential in all job roles, not just those which are purely managerial and leadership ones.

To discover and recruit candidates who are positive influencers, consider giving them scenarios in which their response indicates whether they are team players or more self-centered. How effective they are when it comes to communication may be easier to find by just letting them talk about and explain something that particularly interests during the interview process.

9. Get to Know Their Personality

It’s a matter of fact that certain personality traits are a better fit than others for particular job roles. For example, an individual in a sales role is likely to be more productive and deliver better results if they possess such traits as confidence, creativity, flexibility, and enthusiasm for engaging with other people. Meanwhile, these very same skills aren’t that important for job roles such as that of an accountant, where personality traits such as dependability, diligence, and attention to detail are more desired.

However, accurately assessing the personality of a candidate can be a difficult task. During the interview, consider asking them to give their honest answer to specific scenarios to better gauge how they are as a person. This is an approach that big names like Microsoft, Google, and Apple take in their intensive interview process.

Alternatively, you can consider asking candidates to take a pymetrics test. This test has been incorporated into the hiring process of companies like Unilever and Accenture. It’s a tool that uses a combination of neuroscience and artificial intelligence to gauge an individual’s various personality traits and helps companies better recruit the right candidates.

However, don’t take this test as your bible in assessing a candidate. Mistakes can be made during the test and you can rarely ever get an accurate picture of something as complex as a person’s personality by asking them to play a bunch of simple games and seeing the result. Use the pymetrics test as a supplement to your interview questions and intuitions in picking the right candidates but not as the main criteria.

10. Ask Them to Share Their Past Failures

Candidates have an incentive to showcase their best picture during the interview but the picture they give may not always be the most honest one. To gauge how honest and transparent a particular candidate is acquired from them any significant shortcomings or failures they experienced in the past.

If the person downplays them or is reluctant to talk about it, it could be a sign that they are not the most honest of individuals.

We’re Here to Make Your Job Easier

As mentioned before, recruitment can be a very costly and time-consuming process but we’re here to make the process easier for you. As one of the leading staffing agencies in the state of Colorado, we are adept at connecting our clients with the right candidates for their job positions.

To get started, simply register with us and post your job openings using this link. For any further information or queries, feel free to call us on our number – (833) 303-JOBS.