Every company wants to improve the quality of their hires and are seeking similar candidates. In order to capture candidates that best suit the profile, each company needs to design their own recruiting process to appeal to potential recruits. The best way to explain this prospective is by understanding the nature of the recruiting process.

Nature of the Recruiting Process

A common observation is that we hire individuals based on the information we know about them, we at times even limit their chances of learning new skills based on what we as employers know about them and expect them to do, even if they can do much more.

Aside from this another problem we face is that when the promotions are limited but the number of applicants keeping  an eye out for that promotion are many, we often find ourselves in a pickle. While the number of individuals who we know deserves that promotion due to various reasons; deciding whom to promote puts us in a dilemma. Now that we have a rough idea about the nature of the recruiting process we can then understand how a recruiting plan should be.

When designing a recruitment plan, one need’s to form a plan to promote people, move people internally and then apply it to the external hiring process. Given the difficulty in selecting quality hires, here are “5 Tips to Increase the Quality of Hires.”

Focus on the Experience and Past Performance to Assess Ability                                

When an internal hiring is conducted we give more emphases on the employee’s experience and their past performance according to us and then we assess their ability. Before making a selection we check for other aspects apart from these like, if they are reliable, the ability to learn and adapt, how well a person fits into the work culture and how they work with a team. Well who said that this cannot be done with new candidates that we hire and the process is called Performance based hiring.

Use the Performance Management Process for Hiring

Don’t you think that it is odd that we define the tasks that a candidate is expected to perform only upon hiring them. So just like companies have a performance management process, similarly we can integrate this into our recruiting strategy. In order to do this we as recruiter’s can pose a question like define the top 2 – 3 performance objectives and why a top fully- employed person should consider this job as a career change. There you have it, simple and easy.

Writing Job Specs

When writing job specs, instead of focussing primarily on what skills he / she should have, you can focus on what tasks or work the applicant will be expected to do, to be a great hire. This will attract the right candidates to your job ads.

Conduct a Pre – hire Performance Review

When you conduct an interview, make sure to ask the candidate to describe their single most significant accomplishment in your career so far? This question will definitely help you to distinguish between a good candidate and an ordinary one.

Use Performance Based Job Descriptions

Upon hiring the individual ensure that you clarify the performance based job descriptions within the first week of employment. Let the new recruits know what you’re expecting; if any training is required make sure you inform them so they are not caught off guard. Whatever you do make sure that you give them a fair chance to succeed.

So there you go, now you are equipped with all the necessary information you need to look for during an interview so you won’t miss a quality hire when you encounter one. So make sure that you get to hire them as such candidates aren’t easily obtainable.