25 secrets of the perfect hire

A new employee – even a junior one – is an expensive acquisition, and doubly so if you get it wrong.

One appointment could markedly contribute to your organisation’s profits. Employing new personnel is neither voodoo nor particularly involved. Most is quite simple and involves applying the same kind of instructions to hiring that you would do to any other costly decision. With this in mind Growing Business asked the experts to come up with some pointers to ensure your business gets the right stuff, not stuffed.

1. WORK OUT WHAT THE JOB IS

Hardly difficult, but the number of employers who approach an interview with the misplaced belief that they know exactly what they want is astounding. All that you have to do, says Derek Kemp, chairman of Liquid HR, is to sit down and identify what this is. “It’s not even a job description – just one sentence and a list of their responsibilities.” Show it to other people and also ask someone in a similar, or the same, job if your perceptions are right. Write down in two columns what skills are non-negotiable and what might be nice. Think about the duties, responsibilities, authorities and internal and external relationships they will have to manage or be a part of.

2. WHAT CAN YOU OFFER?

Knowing what you need is all well and good, but make sure your budget will stretch to it. Research what level of pay and benefits package is competitive in your sector. Take a look at other local and national advertisements, and try to get hold of a salary. Michael Page’s surveys break salaries down by role, sector and location and are available free online at: www.michaelpage.co.uk.

3. WHEN DO YOU NEED THEM?

If you’re replacing an existing member of staff then the answer may be ‘immediately’. If you’re creating a brand new position or strand of the business, it might be wise to delay the start date until the firm has both the resources and game plan to support the new area. Equally, you might expect the new recruit to build this strand, in which case their input and knowledge in the first instance will be invaluable. For junior appointments, exactly how much training are you prepared to offer them? When do you expect them to be competent? And do you need a hand-over period, meaning you’ll be paying two salaries for a set time?

4. ADVERTISE INTERNALLY

Start by looking for a replacement among existing employees. It’s not only a matter of courtesy, but staff may have friends or contacts that might be interested in the vacancy. If you haven’t got it already, you should publicise a formal scheme, with monetary incentives for staff who put forward successful candidates who survive an agreed probationary period. It’s the cheapest form of advertising. Cast your eye over any applicants you’ve kept on file or had in before, including freelancers who may be after a permanent position. Industry training providers may have a ready batch of potential recruits for first-time positions or more experienced roles from MBA courses, for example.

5. ADVERTISE EXTERNALLY

If and when you go external, “you need to ask yourself what this person will read when they are looking for work – local papers, trade press, or the net”, says Colin Mercer, director of assessment and development at HR Consultants Whitland Westcott. “And you don’t want to save money by putting, for example, an engineering job in the paper on a Tuesday, when Wednesday is the day that these jobs are advertised.” Moreover, he continues, it’s not just about advertising – you need to be looking for candidates from a number of different sources. Agencies, the internet, your networks and staff recommendations are all good.

6. GET THE ADVERT RIGHT

Ad design, continues Mercer, also needs careful thought. “It needs to grab people’s attention and communicate exactly what you’re looking for. However, you need a careful balance. If it’s all grab, you’ll get lots of replies, mostly irrelevant, but if it’s too picky then the response will be too small.” Do you want colour or black and white, and is it necessary to get the advert specially designed for you? It’s also well worth asking the company with whom you place the ad whether this comes as part of the service. If this is the case, make sure that you get to see how it will appear and where. What size of ad can you afford?

7. CONTENT OF THE AD

Keep it succinct. The duties and responsibilities, qualifications and experience required, personal traits, location, and the form of reply are must-haves in most cases. As for salary, if it’s pretty decent, put it in, if not then omit it, or put something meaningless like ‘generous salary’. Don’t swamp your ad with clichés. Mercer recommends that you get someone else to read it for typos or missing details: “I’ve seen adverts in newspapers where there’s no response because the address or phone number was either incorrect or missing. That could have been avoided by using another pair of eyes.”

8. BE PREPARED TO SPEND

Costs for adverts are hard to pin down, but adverts on the internet should cost between £200 and £300. Magazines and newspapers will charge you rate card, but you should try to get 20-40% off. However, The Guardian, for example, charges about £100 per column centimetre depending on which day you advertise, and is unlikely to haggle. Trade mags will charge a similar rate, but may be prepared to negotiate. Find out what you’ll get for your money. Repeats, online exposure and positioning are important. Ask whether copy is included and if you can negotiate long-term deals.

9. GET A GOOD SIFTING PROCESS

“Now that you’ve got your pile of CVs in,” says Mercer, “you need to paper sift.” The key to this is objectivity. Firstly, divide the applications into suitable and unsuitable piles. Secondly look at those who will be able to do the job and those you’d like to employ. Mercer explains that: “You will also want to have a few points that might make a candidate worth seeing regardless. For instance, they might not be exactly what you’re after, but they may have worked for a competitor – they could be a useful source of commercial intelligence.”

10. REPLY TO EVERYBODY

Try to reply to everybody who applies. Remember that each applicant’s relatives and friends could be current or potential customers. Definite rejects should be informed early, while ‘maybes’ should be kept on hold until you’re sure that those who made your final shortlist are available, or are as appropriate as you first thought. ‘Definites’ should be prioritised to affirm interest, so fix up a date and time as soon as possible.

11. DECIDE WHO TO INTERVIEW

How many should you actually interview? “It totally depends,” says Mercer. “If there’s only one suitable person, then there’s no point in bulking the list up with four unsuitable ones.” Generally, most professional recruiters look for a shortlist of three to six people, so say, four or five is a nice number. But this is only a guideline and numbers will vary widely.

12. AND GET AN INTERVIEWING STRATEGY

“The secret,” explains Kemp, “is preparation. You need to prepare your questions in order to determine whether or not the applicant is what you’re looking for.” He favours the behavioural approach. “Don’t start out by saying ‘Let me tell you about us’ – you give them all the answers. Do that at the end of the interview and ask them to tell you about themselves first,” he says.

13. DON’T JUDGE ON APPEARANCES

Is the person sitting opposite you beautiful or handsome? Do you just instinctively like their appearance, their mannerisms? Do they just feel like the right candidate for the job to you? “If everything is going well,” says Kemp, “I think great and I give them a harder interview. Why? Because in 30 seconds I’ve already made the judgement that I like this person. Equally if I feel negative about them I back off in order to see if my initial reaction was correct.” If yours is a small business, you will probably meet this person every day, they need to be good.

14. PROBE A LITTLE DEEPER

“Worst case scenario, this person could damage client relationships, irritate work colleagues and run off with business,” says Michelle Cowell, a director at Gorilla recruitment, a specialist agency for entrepreneurial businesses. “Ask them about where they live, who they live with, and if they’ve moved around from job to job. If they have, find out why. After all, you don’t want their personal issues disrupting the office.” Probe for examples of how they work. For example, “tell me how you avoided a terrible mistake or show me how you dealt with a particularly difficult customer,” says Kemp. A good way of getting people to tell you about themselves is to say something like: “Imagine I was really unprofessional. I go to the pub and meet your best mate and get them absolutely plastered – what would they say about you?” Use of the third-person often really helps people open up about themselves. Interview for one-and-a-half hours and not 45 minutes. Typically you should do about 10% of the talking. Much more and it’s not an interview.

15. ASK ABOUT GAPS

Indeed, if you are suspicious about a candidate, gaps in a CV can be a real giveaway. If dates are vague, then that suggests that someone may have been sacked and is trying to cover it up, or that their stellar career includes long periods of unemployment. Many people work on the assumption that they will never be checked and trade on fake degrees, or even entirely fictitious resumés for years. And horror stories of people employed in positions of trust who have lost previous jobs for say, stealing, abound.

16. DON’T DISCRIMINATE

You should ensure that you design your criteria to be as non-discriminatory as possible. The last thing that you want is clumsy questioning resulting in a discrimination suit – especially when there is no award ceiling for these. Avoid the obvious as well as any potentially grey areas such as age, disability and health. And don’t ask if they’re pregnant.

17. CLOSING THE INTERVIEW

You may want to introduce them to the people that they could be working with at the end of the interview. If you do decide that you want to offer someone a job, be very careful. “Don’t under any circumstances make a verbal offer without contractual strings,” cautions Kemp. “If you do this and they accept, then that’s a contract. And if your actual written contract has all sorts of other clauses, they can accept the one they prefer. So you must say ‘subject to confirmation in writing.’”

18. SCREEN

There’s no excuse for not taking up a reference. If you’re going to employ someone in a sensitive position you might want to consider screening them – and if you are employing someone who looks after other people’s money, you may even have a fiduciary duty to do so. According to a report from The Risk Advisory Group, 62% of candidates have some sort of discrepancy on their CVs. “Lying about degrees,” says Bob Dulieu, COO of investigations group Capcom, “is very common”.

19. CONSIDER THE PITFALLS

It’s not just high positions that you should screen. Your secretary or even your cleaner can be privy to highly sensitive information. For jobs in some financial areas, everyone should be screened. Checking out qualifications, both academic and professional usually takes just a couple of phone calls. A simple screen can be had for a few hundred pounds, which is nothing compared to the total cost of a new employee. As Dulieu says: “The investment in screening someone can save an organisation a lot of money.”

20. AN EMPLOYEE IS NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS

Don’t go in with the attitude that if an employee doesn’t work out, you can sack them. “These days you can’t just dump people,” says Debra King a consultant at Croner. Worse, the 12-month watershed isn’t cast iron anymore. Workers, even many casual workers, have quite a few rights and there’s no place for a cavalier attitude. “Writs” she says, “often appear to have little reason to them. But if someone claims for unfair dismissal it could cost you up to £53,500.”

21. MAKE THEM FEEL WELCOME

Much as you quickly make impressions about people, they make impressions about your business. So help them make the right ones. There’s nothing worse for a new employee than arriving on Monday morning to find that nobody is there to greet them. So, when they arrive have them sent up for a chat and coffee. If you can’t be there, it’s not a disaster, just ensure that someone else is.