Making the right choice when it comes to hiring your next member of staff is vital to the success of your business. It’s important to choose someone who can really add value. Someone who fits with your culture. And of course, their future potential in the business.
So what do you do when you have two candidates who are both exceptional? How should you choose which to offer the job to?
Sometimes it’s hard to get a really good idea of how someone will perform in a job just from a standard interview. It can be easy to make the mistake of hiring someone based on their ability to interview well. But what about the hard and soft skills to actually be successful at the job? Setting tasks is a great way to help you choose between two candidates.
Culture fit is really important when it comes to making a hire. How will that person fit in your current team? Do they have similar personality traits to others in the team? Will they complement what you already have? There is a lot to consider. When introducing a new person to an established team, it’s important to remember team dynamic. You can even take the ‘beer test’ online for remote works if necessary. Get each candidate to have a ‘social interview’ with the team for half an hour. That way the team can give you their feedback too.
Look at the future of your company
It’s important to not just hire for now, but for the future too. As hopefully, your chosen candidate will be with you for a number of years. Does one of the candidates have skills that may be of use in the future? Do you have plans to grow the team over the next few years? It’s always important to think about how your candidate could grow with your company.
Get references
Finally, if you really are stuck and despite all of the above, the candidates are still on a par with each other a reference can help make the final decision. Whilst lots of companies will only provide confirmation of dates and job title, it is still possible to gain a more informal reference. Working with an agency means that we can help you when it comes to references. We can speak to the candidate and ask them to make an introduction to the referee on our behalf.
Getting the best candidate takes two people to make a decision. You need to want to hire them and they want to join you. This is where working with a recruiter really comes into helping you make a decision. It’s possible that a candidate is interviewing with a few companies. Working with a recruiter means that you will get to know if your role is their top choice and even if they are not actively looking for a role, can you match their current benefits and salary expectations. Again this is something that a recruiter will help you with. By knowing exactly what the expectations of the candidate are from the start, you’ll know if they are indeed ‘the best candidate’ for you.
