Recruitment & Selection

Here are our top 10 tips for Recruitment & Selection – from where to place your job adverts to how many people should attend interviews.

Is recruitment the best option? Or can you redistribute work among your existing team or streamline process and procedures to do more with less?

This is an essential document, not just for recruitment, but for probation and ongoing performance management activities as well.

Define your business USP and ask yourself, why would someone want to work with you? Remember, you are trying to encourage potential applicant to apply. 

TIP: Avoid any potentially discriminatory language. 

To ensure you attract the best pool of candidates, and if you have any demographic inequality in your business, place your adverts somewhere you are likely to get more applications from that demographic group. 

When taking applications, where possible, avoid asking for personal details and potentially personal sensitive information, such as protected characteristics. This helps to avoid potential discrimination claims or assessors being influenced by unconscious bias. 

When sifting, sifters should only be looking to identify essential and desirable criteria. Ranking applications with all elements the most highly. Those with only essential skills and experience next, then those with only desirable elements.

TIP: Try to sift down to only 4-8 candidates for further selection. 

Design your selection process to ensure you test all essential and desirable skills and experience at least three times during the process. The application is one, another could be a document check or competency assessment. Practical tests are also invaluable in ensuring candidates can ‘walk the talk’. 

Always have at least two people assessing any interviews or other selection events. This helps eliminate biases that one person might have, and ensure a balanced and fair process. Consider having one on the phone so they are not influenced by the candidate’s physical appearance. 

Always ask every candidate the same questions to ensure consistency in approach to the selection exercise. And never make a snap decision during the interview – wait until you have seen all the candidates and then review with your interviewing partner to make an informed and analytical decision. 

Make and keep detailed notes of your sifting and selection activities, as this will be essential to review when making decisions, and in defending any potential discrimination claim that might be made if a candidate is not successful. 

If you haven’t found someone appointable, go back to market.

Not sure where to start with HR? Or are you a HR veteran and just need a little support in terms of documents and systems. No matter your situation or employee numbers – we’re here to support you.