How to Hire the Right Person for the Job: 12 Hiring Tips

Great hires help reduce a company's operational costs while also contributing to its profits.

Several factors can prevent companies from selecting the right people for their jobs. Companies must do their best to select those who seek long-term retention and work towards keeping them engaged and motivated.

In this post, we will explore how to hire the right person for a job role with some proven recruitment strategies. We will also see how the right hires make a difference in the quality of a workforce.

What Does It Mean to Hire the “Right” Person?

Let us recall the definition of the right person for a job. When companies hire the right person, they have the following expectations of them:

• Must possess skills and characteristics that fit the job role and the working team.
• Must quickly understand their job expectations and problems at hand.
• Must possess sufficient analytical and problem-solving skills to provide holistic solutions.
• Must be actively engaged with other team members and company leaders.
• Must be effective in communicating their suggestions and requirements.
• Must be willing to learn and upskill themselves.
• Must show measurable results in the form of project deliverables or business profits.
• Must consider communications and negotiations with the employer.

In addition to these factors, recruiters and talent acquisition professionals must analyze candidates' overall value profile and career history to ensure they do not become bad hires who quit their jobs quickly.

Most of the parameters discussed above can be difficult to evaluate by a single person alone. That is why companies must have a strong recruitment process fueled by AI-powered analytics to reduce hiring mistakes and recruit the right person for the job.

Why is Hiring the Right Person Important?

The right hires match not only the skillsets and experience of a job role but are also aligned with the company’s goals, culture, and team dynamics. Altogether, the right employees help a company grow holistically.

Here are some of the areas directly impacted by the quality of hires in a company:

1. The right hires help boost the team’s morale as they blend well with other members.
2. The right members accelerate a team’s performance and quality of deliverables.
3. The right hires save a company’s time and resources spent on frequent hiring, onboarding, and training.
4. A company’s brand reputation and customer experience lie in hiring the right person for relevant job roles.
5. Companies hiring the right candidates face less turnover and fewer compliance issues as they are aligned with the company’s policies.
6. Hiring the right people is crucial to ensure active engagement among employees and leaders in a company.

12 Tips to Hire the Right Person for the Job

Although the requirements of a right hire are easy to define, it can be difficult for recruiters to filter and evaluate several candidates. A CareerBuilder survey shows that 75% of employers have hired the wrong person for a job role, which has affected their businesses.

The recruitment process is highly sensitive, involving several rounds of intense evaluations and careful assessments across several levels. A small mistake at any hiring level can result in a bad hire for the company. That is why it is important to keep the recruitment process foolproof to get the right person for the job.

Let’s learn some good strategies that help recruiters find the right employees for job roles.

1. Clearly Define the Role and Success Criteria

The first step to hiring the right person is to make sure that the right candidates are aware of your job vacancies. While this includes posting job advertisements on several talent acquisition platforms, recruiters must fine-tune their job requirements and filtering criteria to reach ideal matches.

Job descriptions are often places where unconscious bias tends to appear, leading to the assumption that the company prefers only certain candidates to apply. Such practices can seem unfair to others who may be eligible but do not qualify for the given role.

Hence, it is important to craft clear and specific job descriptions that specify the skill requirements, the qualifying factors, and the expected job experience. Additionally, employers must include details about the kind of employees they need to fit their culture, which we will discuss next.

• Keep your job descriptions inclusive and easy to understand.
• Highlight the importance of the job role towards the company or team’s business development.
• Mention the evaluation criteria and qualifying parameters to help candidates prepare better.

2. Prioritize Values and Culture Fit Early On

Job descriptions must clearly indicate what is expected from candidates who will join your company. In addition to the technical skills and experience required to do the job, it is necessary to mention the values and characteristics of the ideal employee that the job expects.

Prioritizing values necessary for smooth team dynamics helps filter candidates who can engage well and adapt to the new team’s working style. For instance, some teams may require members who can proactively take tasks without being instructed or monitored. Such characteristics must be judged from the initial rounds of evaluation to measure the candidate’s curiosity and proactiveness.

Similarly, get the team members and leaders who require a new candidate to provide their opinions and insights when creating job descriptions. Apt feedback from the team and leaders helps filter the right candidates who can fit the team’s work culture.

• Mention the key values and culture requirements to attract candidates eager to work in your company.
• Include sufficient information about the team and its working style while posting job descriptions.
• Focus on how employees value your company’s culture and show eagerness to participate in your company’s journey.

3. Structure a Data-Backed Recruitment Process

Candidates must be selected based on valid data and proof at every step of the recruitment process. No stage of the hiring pipeline must involve intuitions or assumptions that a certain candidate will do well.

To avoid errors in the selection process, recruiters should devise a comprehensive scoring mechanism to evaluate candidates at each stage. Interviewers must also conduct their sessions in a structured manner without showing any bias towards candidates.

Furthermore, predictive analytics in the interview process can help recruiters avoid past hiring mistakes and find the right employee. They also provide clear insights when interviewers are confused about choosing candidates who are equally qualified.

• Every candidate selection must be backed by proper data and analysis, from sourcing and screening resumes to conducting interviews.
• Use predictive analytics and insights to avoid past hiring mistakes and support hiring choices.
• Get the opinions of one or more talent acquisition professionals and team members while selecting candidates.

4. Ask Smart, Behavioral, and Situational Interview Questions

Assessing a candidate’s emotional intelligence is vital to evaluating their fit for a job role. Recruiters and interviewers must ask questions that let employees share their opinions and perspectives.

Such questions need not necessarily have one correct answer. However, candidates' analysis of the situation and arrival at solutions can reveal a lot about their characteristics and behavior.

Scenario-based evaluations help analyze candidate beyond what is specified in their resumes. For instance, candidates can be given different roles and asked how they would solve the given problem in real life.

• Test the candidates’ industry knowledge and familiarity with current trends.
• Give them scenarios and roles to assume and arrive at problem solutions.
• Provide them with case studies and discover how they propose solutions to existing problems.

5. Use Assessments, Work Samples, or Take-Home Projects

There should be one or two dedicated rounds for hands-on evaluation of candidates' skills. Rather than just going by what candidates claim in their resumes, online or offline assessments, case-study evaluations, take-home projects, or challenges help recruiters understand their knowledge levels.

Coding championships, sales pitch emails, marketing campaigns, module design, flow diagram constructions, and many other challenges help panel members decide on candidates' technical prowess. These are some take-home projects that candidates may continue to solve or work on if they do not qualify for that round.

Candidates can also be encouraged to carry a portfolio of work samples in case they cannot showcase their skills within a short period of time. In the end, the quality of their work and consistency prove to be deciding factors in hiring the right person.

• Plan and create a strategy to test candidates to showcase their technical skills.
• Provide assignments similar to the work they will be doing in their roles.
• Ensure to curate challenges depending on the candidates’ experiences rather than repeating the same set for all candidates.

6. Prioritize Soft Skills as Much as Technical Skills

Many interviews focus on evaluating the technical skills relevant to the job role, often ignoring the communication abilities of candidates. Communication is mostly seen as a skill that can be picked up while blending with the team.

In reality, employees lacking the required communication skills often distance themselves from able members, trying to find similar employees like them. Such actions can affect the team’s productivity and the overall quality of deliverables.

Since communication is an important part of a team’s work dynamics, interviewers must provide sufficient scores for how candidates communicate their answers. Moreover, recruiters must score candidates based on their emotional intelligence, adaptability, ability to work as a team, and engagement with new members.

• Conduct group discussions, debates, role-plays, and workshops to assess candidates’ real-time problem-solving and communication skills.
• Include soft skills training during the onboarding process as a mandatory session.
• Have a dedicated test or interview to test candidates' emotional intelligence and adaptability.

7. Check References Thoroughly

A crucial part of hiring the right person involves conducting detailed background checks and verifying the selected candidate. In recent times, the job market has seen a rise in fake resumes and experience claims.

Furthermore, many companies have employees working remotely and do not have any direct interviews or interactions with company leaders and HR. For such reasons, companies must conduct a thorough background check of employees and their past work experience.

Talent acquisition teams must have dedicated professionals aided by relevant software tools or platforms to screen candidates and their professional journey. Understanding their professional ethics and working style shows recruiters if a candidate fits a job role in a given team in the company.

• Contact two or more team members or the immediate manager of the selected candidate from their previous company(s) to understand their work style.
• Verify candidates’ social media profiles to check for any undesirable behaviors or indulgences.
• Conduct a thorough verification of the candidate’s educational qualifications and certifications.

8. Don’t Rush the Decision

Any company can face sudden employee turnover due to voluntary reasons or prevailing industry situations, such as the Great Resignation. This can directly impact the smooth functioning of one or more teams in the organization.

The direct response to such resignations would be to fill the empty roles as soon as possible so that business can continue as usual. However, hiring decisions made in a hurry can often result in bad hires who may cause huge losses to the company.

That is why it’s essential for the company to always have a standby talent pool or pipeline with a list of eligible candidates. This list can be constructed from candidates who have previously applied for different positions and qualified for several rounds of interviews, but could not be selected then.

• The hiring process must be fast-tracked without compromising the number and quality of selection rounds.
• Have a list of eligible candidates from previous hiring drives and send offers or further evaluation calls to them in case of sudden turnovers.
• Maintain a list of job roles in your company with frequent turnovers due to market situations.

9. Involve the Team in Final Rounds

While it is good practice to have a neutral recruiter hire new members for a team in an unbiased manner, there must be one or more representatives from the team to judge the candidates who will be joining their team.

Evaluating candidates for their technical and analytical skills and their fit in a particular team is essential. A candidate’s flexibility, ability to adapt to the team’s culture, and collaborative work dynamics are crucial to ensuring the quality of the team's deliverables.

Involving the team’s leader and key team members helps assess the new candidate. They can interact with candidates to detect any red flags and avoid bad hires who can affect their team’s performance and engagement.

• Have the team members present at least one technical evaluation round and the final HR interview.
• Encourage team members to ask questions based on their experiences with past employees.
• Ensure candidates are evaluated for fit in a team and suit a team’s working style.

10. Set Up the New Hire for Long-Term Success

The recruitment process does not end with selecting/hiring a candidate. The company must ensure a smooth transition from a talented candidate to a trusted employee. This transition involves a comprehensive onboarding program to help candidates blend with the company and its culture.

The onboarding program must give employees a clear view of the company’s goals, vision, mission, and core policies that form the pillars of its business. Employees must be able to resonate with and get an idea of how they can be successful contributors to the company's growth.

Leaders and HR professionals must mandate training and workshops on topics such as compliance policies, intellectual property rights, employee benefits, engagement initiatives, POSH (Prevention of Sexual Harassment) at the workplace, and much more, right from the day candidates join the company.

• Prepare a mandatory checklist of mandatory programs and training for new joiners.
• Conduct company-level trainings and welcome sessions by top leaders to make new joinees feel at home.
• End each onboarding session by highlighting the expectations for new joiners and how their contributions will impact the company.

11. Align the Hiring Process With Your Company’s Vision and Mission

As much as it is important to validate a candidate’s technical skills for a job role, it is equally important to assess their value profile and fit with the company’s goals.

Hiring rounds must be aligned to measure the candidate’s ability to contribute to the company’s vision and mission. For instance, a company that values a systematic approach must analyze how much importance a candidate gives to the minute processes and detailing in solving a problem.

The way a candidate answers or analyzes a given problem in each hiring round shows how they are aligned with the company’s core policies, which are non-negotiable parameters. It also shows how much a candidate knows about the company and its work nature.

• Refine and customize your hiring interviews to assess candidates' working style and nature.
• Conduct role-plays and case-study interviews to understand candidate strengths and weaknesses.
• Provide sufficient scoring weightage to how much a candidate is aware of the company’s vision and long-term goals.

12. Leverage People Analytics Tools Like Revaluate180

Hiring decisions are based on carefully derived conclusions from candidate scores and interviewer insights from different hiring rounds. However, each process has several risks and the potential to introduce errors.

Several AI recruitment tools help recruiters make the right hiring decisions without the presence of any unconscious bias. These tools help evaluate a candidate’s overall value profile to check for their overall fit for the job, maximize retention, and match the right candidate to the right job role.

R180’s AI-powered analytics provides recruiters with data-driven insights at different stages of the hiring pipeline to help them make the right recruitment decisions. Moreover, our candidate assessment and screening methods look beyond a candidate’s resume to evaluate their eligibility for a job role, ensuring companies hire the right person for the job.

• Tie up with a recruitment platform to save time by outsourcing mundane tasks like resume screening, candidate evaluation, and other tasks.
• Continuously feed the tool/platform with candidate feedback and past employee details to get accurate predictions on the right hires.
• Use their dashboards to monitor the quality of your hires and assess your hiring strategies periodically.

How Revaluate180 Helps You Hire the Right Person

Mapping the right candidate to the right job role is easier said than done. Many recruiters worldwide still face challenges in spotting and retaining the ideal candidates for their benefit.

Revaluate180 provides bespoke solutions to help identify and evaluate the ideal candidates for your job roles. Our proprietary analytics uses AI to generate comprehensive reports and quantifiable insights on the right candidates.

Moreover, we perform a long-term best-fit evaluation based on individuals' overall value profiles, the job skill requirements, and the target teams’ dynamics. We also have long-term data insights tracking to ensure maximum retention of the right employees in your company.

Our customer testimonials are proof of our optimal hiring insights for long-term retention and engagement.

Final Thoughts

To hire the right person for a job, it is mandatory to understand how to frame a comprehensive hiring strategy to attract and select the ideal candidates. The hiring process plays a huge role in fetching the right candidates who can immensely contribute to a company’s growth and profits.

Conversely, a small hiring mistake in the hiring pipeline can lead to employee turnover, or a bad employee who brings losses to the company. Thankfully, several AI recruitment tools powered with predictive analytics help recruiters make optimal hiring decisions in each stage of the hiring process.

So, companies must leverage the best hiring practices and AI-powered insights to find the right candidates. Connect with us today if you are looking for expert guidance to frame a good hiring strategy and improve employee retention.