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If you want the best, you must impress!
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Posted in Employers on Sep 26, 2012 by Richard Hayden
Why is it important to impress? Super star employees are hard to find, hard to impress and hard to keep. First impressions matter immensely and how your company acts in the recruitment process will speak volumes to candidates as to what type of employer you will be.
Handling applications
Certain job adverts attract many applications - before you start the recruitment process, make sure you have considered how you are going to manage them.
- Set up a simple email template thanking the candidate for their application.
- State a date by which you will get back to them if they are successful in the short listing process.
Arranging Interviews
It is likely that a proportion of your applicants will currently be in employment. With this mind, we would recommend being as flexible as possible when it comes to setting your interview times.
- Before or after work interview slots show you respect the candidates time by not forcing them to take a day’s holiday or worse cause the candidate to tell a white lie to their present employer to be able to attend a slot more convenient for you.
- Give as much information as possible with regards to the format of the interview – will it be competency based, will you expect them to complete any testing?
- People can get lost - they panic and then really don’t perform as well as they could in an interview situation. To avoid this, give clear, solid directions to your offices!
Interviewing
Without a doubt, interviews are difficult – a candidate has maybe an hour to make their best impression on you whilst getting across how and why they could be valuable to your business. We recommend making this process as professional and pain free as possible by following a few simple pieces of advice:
- Don’t be late – you wouldn’t expect a candidate to be late! Make sure you leave plenty of time before and after the interview in case meetings run on or your interview runs over.
- Be prepared – re-read the candidate’s CV before the interview and prepare some questions that you would like to ask.
Feedback
Constructive feedback is extremely important. Though honesty can sometimes seem unfair or harsh, it can actually help a candidate gain their dream job further down the line.
- Feedback must be constructive – tell a candidate what they did well and what you felt was impressive about their experience, then provide feedback on areas where they could improve upon.
- You cannot discriminate on gender, sexual orientation, colour or disability so your feedback needs to never be related to these factors i.e. ‘they may have a baby so I can’t employ them’.
Offers
Do not deliberate for too long! We have seen many a good candidate get made job offers by other companies whilst waiting to hear back from an interview.
- Make your offer in a timely manner and if you give your interviewees a date that you will get back to them by, make sure you stick to it!
- If you are making an offer to a candidate, offer the salary that they are worth. Offering lower salaries can undermine the candidate and their value to you as an employer.
- Send a formal offer letter for peace of mind and make sure your newest member of staff has received their contracts of employment within 8 weeks of starting.
At Key Appointments, we help organisations to attract the best and save them time in the process. If you would like to know more about how we can help you to recruit the right people to move your business forward, please call us on 0844 5044666.
