7 Easy Steps to Finding and Hiring the Best

The simple seven-step process is relatively easy but different from the traditional hiring process.

Our hiring process is as follows:

1. Cast your net – There are countless ways to find new team members … use them all. Start with the most effective. Chances are that if you like your current employees, their friends will be similar. Offer an incentive for employee referrals. Next, place announcements with your local house of worship. Also, ask your customers, suppliers, and strategic alliance partners. You can promote on the internet both with paid sites like Monster, CareerBuilder, and Hot Jobs. You can also use social media including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Finally, you can use more traditional outlets like classified ads.

2. Cull out the prospective team members – Next, you will need an efficient method of culling out the best prospects. I recommend using a phone screening process where you will have the prospects call into a voicemail and answer a few questions. This way you can hear how they sound and respond to your questions. Only those you choose will be invited to the next step.

3. Group interview – Ideally, you will have identified 10 to 15 candidates for your position. Don’t waste your time interviewing all of them. Rather, invite them to a group interview where you can outline the vision for your company, describe the culture, describe the position, and answer questions. This approach allows you to compare each of the candidates and choose the top two or three for personality testing and a test drive.

4. Personality Profile – There are many great personality tests available today. In the past, these tests were reserved for Fortune 500 companies because they were expensive and cumbersome to administer. Today, you can send a candidate to an internet link and have the test results almost instantaneously available. These profiles will ask a series of questions and then line the candidate up against the profile that has been customized for the position you are attempting to hire. The costs range from $150 to $500 which is a very small price to pay compared to the cost of hiring the wrong person. I use two profiles, Profile XT for all candidates and the Flippen profile for management candidates.

5. Test Drive – Once you have found candidates that fit your profile, run them through a two to four-hour job simulation. Basically, you simply create the best possible example of the position and let each of the candidates try out the position. This test drive is as important for the candidate as it is for you. It allows the candidate to experience the company, meet some co-workers and try out the position to see if it is a good fit. You can compare two or three candidates and decide which one is the best fit.

6. Final Interview – Now that you have better information to help control the interview process, you can finally interview the candidate. Most good profile tests will give you specific interview questions to help you probe areas where the candidate did not perfectly match up to your criteria.

7. Hire – After interviewing the candidate you like, you should immediately prepare a job offer. Most candidates are looking for a job while talking with multiple companies. I have seen a number of clients lose great prospective employees because they were slow to make an offer and the candidate took a position elsewhere. Well executed, this process will take no more than one to two weeks and will yield great results.

I have helped my clients find, screen, hire and develop hundreds of excellent team members utilizing this exact method.