How to Hire Employees [A Definitive Guide]

Employees are a consistent part of any company or organisation. Representing the face of your business brand, employees play a significant role in promoting your products and services in the marketplace.

The growth and success of your company largely depend on the expertise, performance, and dedication of job representatives who are upfront in dealing with clients and handling projects at different business levels.

It doesn't matter what size business you run; you must hire the right person for the right position in your organisation.

Many business organisations usually have an HR department to execute the candidate hiring process. Some prefer an ATS software to get applicants and candidate screening software to filter the applications according to job roles and descriptions. 

Overview of the guide

Hiring high-quality candidates or adding new members to the existing team who stick around and develop your business the way you want can be tricky as it takes lots of time and effort every day. But if you follow a proper hierarchy, it can be a success.

Consider several aspects while matching the right candidate for the right job. Here, we have put together a comprehensive guide to a real scenario of hiring new employees: screening, sending an offer letter and onboarding the right employee for your business. 

Things to consider while hiring employees

Defining a process is critical while recruiting candidates. Keep reading this article to understand what you need to consider while hiring employees.

Job description

Define the responsibilities and qualifications of the position

Every company or business organisation is based on work mechanisms involving different job roles, positions, and structures.

From the interns to management, every employee has a pre-defined KRA to work on. To align your company's workflow in a progressive direction, it is essential to fit the right person in the correct position.  

For that, describing job roles and responsibilities for a particular position on an ATS software is the first thing you must acknowledge before starting the hiring process.

Creating an effective job description

Three-quarters of hiring staff say it's easier to attract top talent when the candidate knows about your organisation, confirming that employer brand is a powerful business tool. (CMS Recruitment)

A clear job description includes a brief about the company or business, like work structure, products, or services, history, achievements and future plans. Check out the list of important components to be included in the catchy job description:

• The autonomy, level of influence, and vision for growth and development in the coming years.
• Mention the role in the job descriptions that a new employee has to play and explain the process of his work's impact on the company. 
• Describe skills like employment eligibility, qualifications, experience, and traits.
• Indicate the opportunities for the candidate and the company's growth through this new role.
• Give a hint about interview questions.
• Include the payroll-like offerings and hike on the CTC based on the work you need to do, your budget and the role's seniority. 
• Share the new employee's expectations for success or development in this role. 
• Comprehend the core values of your company culture, like equity, diversity, and inclusion. 

It is also essential for recruiters to be more upfront about the hiring process and determine the challenges that candidates face, which can help them understand their concerns in real time. 

If you are still looking for the right qualified candidate for your job from the existing applicant pool, you may need to pivot and revise the job description. 

Employer Identification Number (EIN)

Before proceeding with the hiring process, you must register your business with the state or federal authorities. For this, you should have an Employer Identification Number (9-digit number) generally used for tax ID purposes.

Get more information on Employer Identification Number and its requirement and benefits.

Identifying Candidates

The number of employed people in the United Kingdom was forecast to continuously increase between 2022 and 2023 by 0.03 million people (+0.09 per cent). The number is estimated to amount to 32.75 million people in 2023. The indicator describes the number of employed people.

Identifying the responsibilities and qualifications of the position

The next important step in hiring new employees is identifying the best source for finding job candidates. There are numerous portals to advertise your job openings in the UK.

You can post the job openings with some catchy description about the position to reach a targeted audience. If you want to increase this reach, turn your free subscription to paid channels. Here are some of the popular job sites to consider: 

List of popular job portals and social media channels

73% of job seekers aged 18-34 found their last job through social media. 84% of organisations are recruiting through social media. 67% of employers use social media sites to research potential job candidates. 70% of managers have had success hiring through social media. (Zippia)

• Indeed: It is one of the most popular job posting portals in the world where you can reach out to job seekers worldwide. This job board collates thousands of job advertisements from the best companies and allows them to post directly on the portal.  
• LinkedIn: Connecting the world's leading professionals with a network of more than 690 million users, LinkedIn has become an excellent resource for new employees and job finders. Regardless of the hiring status, it offers a fantastic chance for posting jobs to get suitable candidates for the job postings.
• Monster: Established in 1994, Monster allows small business owners, big companies and entrepreneurs to search the new hire or employees by skill set, location, job title and particular keywords via cutting-edge tools and advanced features. Reach out to the best candidates on Monster UK.
• Adzuna: This job board allows recruiters to list new hire jobs, which can be fetched via intelligent search options. Having robust data from the hiring market, it provides all the information about payroll services, new hire reporting and hiring practices.

Besides job portals to have first-hire employees, career site software is also getting popular these days, where many job seekers and current employees publish their resumes and status about job roles and experiences. 

Some job listing software's free to use, and others come with subscription plans. You can take their free trials and use this HR hiring software to find the resume of new hires with all details like job roles, experience, qualifications, and payrolls. Opening an excellent channel for remote employees, these have been known to direct the right person to fit in the job role.

Referral and networking

Networking is a new king for reaching out to the first hire, new member or ideal candidate. If you have a good amount of followers and a targeted audience on different portals like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., take advantage of this opportunity to acquire the audience's attention by advertising your jobs. There are many reasons why networking can be the best choice to be loud about job openings: 

• Social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc., can be a good take into the employee handbook, providing insight into job seekers' personal and work life and highlighting their individuality.
• You can also seek other related information about location, past performance or achievements, status and values. 
• It also gives you an idea about the first employee-to-be, without unconscious bias into a person's strengths and weaknesses, which can help you know his compatibility at your workplace.

Ways of promoting job posts in your network

• You must stay compliant while sharing the copied job post link for administrators, recruiters, users, and new hiring employees on professional and personal networking sites.

Job post promotion via referral

• Referral can also save a lot of time you would spend sorting out the resumes for the interview process to find the best candidate for the job offer. 
• Ask your network, connection, or followers to help find the best employees to fit the defined role. 
• If the job posts get referrals from reputed profiles for the interview process, it also ensures reliability to the new employee looking for the right opportunity in the marketplace. 

Ways to share the referral posts for hiring employees

• Copy the URL (link) of the job opening to have a potential hire on your social media portals where your friends can check out the requirement and be loud for it.
• You can ask your network to repost or share the URL of job board descriptions with their colleagues for better reach. 
• Try to use the direct link of your job requirements, which helps the candidates start filling out applications without switching to 2-3 other links. 

Resume screening

One of the time taking and most challenging jobs of the hiring process is screening candidates' resumes. When you post a job, you will get countless applications. There are many candidate screening software which can not only save your time and effort but also help in easily getting the perfect candidate.

Screening resume and cover letters

The most popular resume sections for candidates are: Personal information (99%), Work experience (98%), Education (97%), and Skills (90%) (Zety)

Get out of resume loads and filter applications of the best candidates with an easy-to-use, fast-processing an ATS Software. Automating the inefficient manual process with tools reduces the dependence on decentralised email and paper processes. 

With an ATS software, you can also reduce your time by checking the cover letters where candidates have given a brief and sending a rejection email to those who still need to fulfil the critical job requirements.

This will help you shortlist the best candidates and decide who should move further in the hiring process. You can communicate with your top applicants by filtering selective resumes to learn more about them.

Identifying the key qualifications and experiences

To have more clarity about how to hire employees, it is essential to check out the relevant details, which include the following:

• Academic qualification
• Past work experience 
• Quantitative evidence of past achievements 
• Longevity in the past job roles 
• Hobbies
• Clear career progression
• Last CTC and Notice Period 

Interviewing

"Whether it is in person or virtual, [the interview] remains the most important part of the hiring journey," Deosingh said.

After shortlisting the right candidates, you can proceed with the interview. Communicate with the shortlisted first employee and ask them for an interview round.

Schedule the date and time of the job interview. Inform the applicant about the process. This will help them prepare for the rounds. 

Want to know how to hire employees for your business or company and schedule interviews like a pro? 

Preparing for the interview

As the interview is the most crucial step of the hiring process, you being a recruiter, must be prepared with your list of questions to be asked in the interview process. Shortlist the questions in the best candidate's interview evaluation process. For example:

• Tell me about yourself.
• What is your aim in life?
• Why are you interested in this job hire vacancy?
• Have you searched for our company?
• What are your professional achievements?
• Describe an ideal work environment.
• What are your strengths and weaknesses?

Behavioural and situational questions

The workplace is a platform for every employee's growth. So, the chances of getting difficult situations or objective opinions are common.

If you are looking for a managerial post or senior candidate, there can also be conflicts in the team.

Employees must have the skills to handle odd situations timely without extending them further to maintain harmony and a cooperative environment in the company.

During the hiring process, you should present these kinds of behavioural and situational questions:

• Tell me about how you work effectively under pressure. 
• Have you ever made a mistake? If yes, then how would you handle it?
• How will you set a deadline for a task or project?
• How to manage your team?
• What do you do if you do not favour your team's opinion?
• Have you dealt with a challenging situation at the workplace? 
• How to motivate your teammates?

Evaluating the candidate's fit for the company culture

After conducting all interview rounds, the next stage is evaluating the candidates' performance. You can set marks or grade criteria to determine the applicants' skills, personality, and experience.

Also, consider how the candidate will add company values with his skills and compare the notes with the shortlisted ones.

Always keep the business needs in your mind and select the new hire or candidate who can help your company achieve new targets in the future. 

Background and reference Checks

The prime step of the recruiting process is the background check of qualified candidates.

Before making a final decision for a candidate's selection, complete a background check.

This process is termed the pre-employment screen, where you can check with the previous companies about overall professionalism.

There are many ways to conduct background and referral checks of applicants. For example:

• Does the candidate have the exact expertise that your company is looking for? 
• What was his contribution to the development of your company?
• Does the applicant have the relevant experience mentioned in the resume or at the time of the interview? 
• It will keep your business, employees and customers safe in the future.
• Check out an application tracking system to know all about the candidate's work background.

Making an offer

Once you've selected the candidate for the role and completed the background check process, be ready to write a job offer letter. Ask for the applicant's email address and set up a time to discuss the final date of joining.

Determining compensation and benefits

• Candidates are always willing to check out your company's benefits, like salary, compensation and benefits.
• It is the clause of the hiring process to discuss how you will pay employees, their payroll taxes or payroll service.

Negotiating and finalising the offer

• In the process of "how to hire employees" for your company, it is imperative to check out the negotiation offer with the candidates. It will not only help you make the right fit in the assumed budget but also cut down the cost as well.

Onboarding and training

• The onboarding process is one of the most happening parts of a recruiter's work life. If the new employer has complex legal requirements, then your company should have an attorney or legal professional to list the terms and conditions.

Preparing for the new employee's first day

• Surpassing all levels of HR processes, the final stage is preparing for the joining day of the candidate who has accepted the offer letter of your organisation.
• For this, you have to provide an orientation to give a board overview of your company's core values, expectations, work processes, client base, products and services, and plans.

Onboarding and training processes

• On joining, you should discuss the company's mission during the onboarding process with the new employee to showcase his role, reporting manager, team members, and colleagues.
• If the new employee has joined as an intern, you must explain the training process to him, including all details like duration and next job role in the company.

Conclusion

Hiring is only some people's cup of tea. There are lots of difficulties and obstacles in the hiring process. To overcome these challenges, we have concluded a real-time solution to get the best candidate in less time.

This article describes how the "how to hire employees" process works efficiently and quickly for business organisations.

Follow the best tips for a fast and easy hiring process:

• Save time using an ATS Software to fetch applications.
• Use career screening software to match the job role.
• Always create a backlog for shortlisted candidates to avoid the chances of not joining after accepting the offer letter.

If you are actively looking for the right guide for how to hire employees for your business or company, follow these stepwise procedures to post jobs and get the best fit today.