Hello people! I hope that you had a great weekend and that you are looking forward to having a productive week.  I was thinking about recruitment matters and I thought that I would share with you my thoughts on a topic that I am very interested in which is how to hire employees.  It is harder to get rid of someone who is not performing well than to actually not recruit that person in the first place. I will concede to the fact that recruitment is not an exact science in that while you might put all the checks and balances in place potential employees can find loopholes and exploit them.  Let me give a few pointers as to how how to hire employees in a way that separates the wheat from the chaff.

Shadowing:  A lot of the times the human resources department hires people without being exposed to the jobs that they are hiring people for.  The effect will be that the employer might not have a 360 degree understanding of what the job is about and this might lead to them looking for the wrong qualities with the end result being the wrong employee.  For example some jobs require people to be strong mentally and such an attribute might be missed if you have not been exposed to the job.  Spend some time in the environment of your potential employee and you will realise that your requirements for the post may change.

Avoid downloading job descriptions:  In some cases you will find that a human resources practitioner will get a job description from the internet.  This seems like a good way to get things done quickly but you will not have the luxury of knowing what factors were at play when the author of the template created that template.  You might end up in a situation where you have a job description which is accurate in its own right but cannot be applied in your firm because of various factors in your microenvironment.  It is important to understand your microenvironment first before you create a job description.

Nepotism: This is the practice of favouring relatives and friends, especially by giving them jobs.  This practice usually results in the firm having less quality in terms of employees than it could have had as the cream is left out in the cold.  A workforce of a lower quality will inevitably result in you achieving less than desirable results.  Remember that the difference between hiring one employee and another is their approach to their work and this difference can be measured in monetary terms.  Sometimes it is actually better to pay your relative that salary while they are at home as it might cost you more to have them on the job with their poor performances costing you income.

Interview panels:  Interview panels have a large bearing on the type of employees that you will have.  They are part of the gatekeepers in the recruitment process and the ratings that they give potential employees will determine who gets the job and who does not.  Many a time I have seen interview panels that consist of the wrong members.  Many firms are tempted to fill the panel with managers and high ranking people.  You should challenge this trend by putting people who are closer to the position that you want to fill who will know more about what is required on the job.  It is actually better to put people who do the job as they will know exactly what is required for that job.

As you can see recruiting is not easy and you should be careful and close as many loopholes as possible.  Knowing how to hire employees is critical to any strategy and you should ensure that you get it as right as possible.  What tactics do you use in recruitment?

Have a nice day

Ruvimbo