Whether you’re running a small business or Human Resources department at a Fortune 500 company, making the best reliable staffing decisions is critical. From the costs of recruiting to training and workplace integration, a new employee comes with far more expenses beyond his or her salary.
These expenses are just some of the reasons you want to hire the right people. However, the best candidates don’t just grow on trees. The reality is that there is a shortage of qualified employees in most industries. Even companies that lean on employment agencies for support find it difficult to round out their staff with the right people. And in many cases, they are using multiple staffing firms to meet their entire needs.
In order to find the best, most qualified employees for your open positions, you must use a thorough, thoughtful screening process.
The Impact of Your Screening Process
As is the case with many areas of business, greater effort upfront saves you time and money over the long haul. In the case staffing, your screening process is the diligence that is rewards you with new employees who are the right fit.
If your screening process fails to weed out a candidate who fails to work out, you will have sunk costs on recruiting and training efforts that you will only have to pay for again to replace the first hire.
Far too often, companies bear the consequences of relying on staffing agencies that send many new employees, but that have too lax a screening process. You don’t want to waste time weeding through unqualified or ill-fitting employees.
The important Combination of Skill and Cultural Fit
Whether it’s you or your employment agency, attention to even the finest details of ideal candidate characteristics can be the difference between hiring the right or wrong employee.
You can only have a great understanding as to whether a candidate is an ideal match if you are able to cross reference your exact needs with the characteristics of a given candidate. And that doesn’t simply include his or her skill (though that is clearly an imperative). Personality and integrity are also critical components of the screening process to ensure you attain reliable staffing.
While skills, experience, and background are standard, the difference lies in finding a cultural fit with your company; and there isn’t a test for that. Understanding culture fit is an intricate art form, and takes expertise to understand what you need and what you have. And because of that, any screening process should be customizable in order to meet specific needs of any role (or any company, in the case of a staffing agency). Cultural nuances are also the reason why meeting candidates face-to-face is key to the success of any reliable staffing agency.
Lastly, whether you are using an employment partner or recruiting and hiring employees completely in house, there must be feedback channels between managers and the staffer. It is imperative that there is a closed-loop process that ensures that each candidate did or did not ultimately meet expectations. Only when your process is truly end to end will you be able to minimize the costs of hiring and grow smoothly to meet your needs.
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