It is very important for businesses to find the right people to join their teams. The wrong person can cause the business to lose time, money, and productivity. That's why it is so important that there is a good plan in place when trying to hire someone new. A good employee requires less management, is more productive, and produces at a higher level. To make sure you get the best employee, it is important to adhere to a standard hiring process that follows best practices and ensures an efficient and effective selection of employees.

At the most basic level, a recruitment process should include advertising the job opening, reviewing resumes, conducting interviews, background checks, and references. However, there are many other factors to consider while picking winners to join your team.

Here are some best practices for hiring good employees:

1. Start with a clear job description. What are the essential duties and responsibilities of the position? What skills and experience are required? The more specific you can be, the better.
2. Use a variety of recruiting methods. Don't just rely on online job boards. Consider using social media, networking, and employee referrals to reach a wider pool of candidates.
3. Screen candidates carefully. Review resumes and cover letters, and conduct phone interviews. Use a scoring system to help you compare candidates.
4. Conduct in-person interviews. This is your chance to get to know the candidates and assess their skills and fit for the role. Ask behavioral interview questions to learn more about how they've handled similar situations in the past.
5. Check references. This is your last chance to make sure the candidate is a good fit for the role. Talk to previous employers, colleagues, and clients to get their feedback.

At Pillar, we've built resources for each one of these into our interview intelligence software to help you find and hire top talent. Additionally, we make sure to follow all-inclusive hiring practices as part of the process. We also have resources on our website to help you on your journey to build the best team. "Best Hiring Practices," "The Ultimate Checklist for Hiring Great Teams," and "How to Hire Good Employees to name a few.

The Importance of Hiring the Right Employee:

Hiring the right employee is important for a number of reasons. The ones we discussed in the previous section are top of mind for many founders, CEOs, and HR teams, but here are a few to indicate the impact of a great hire.

First, it can help you improve your bottom line. A good employee can help you increase sales, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction. Second, it can help you improve your company culture. A good employee can be a positive role model and help to create a more productive and enjoyable work environment. 

Third, it can help you attract and retain top talent. A good employee is more likely to stay with your company if they are happy and feel valued - and often great employees hang out with people like themselves - so hiring from that pool means you're starting with a "winner."

Recruitment Best Practices:

In addition to the standard best practices for hiring good employees, there are a number of other things you can be mindful of improving in your recruitment process - let's begin with the job posting:

- Make sure your job postings are clear and concise. Candidates should be able to quickly understand what the position is about and what skills and experience are required.
- Use keywords throughout your job postings. This will help your postings show up in search results when candidates are looking for jobs.
- Promote your job openings on social media and other online channels. This will help you reach a wider pool of candidates.
- Make it easy for candidates to apply for jobs. The application process should be simple and straightforward.
- Respond to candidates promptly. Candidates should hear back from you within a reasonable timeframe, even if you are not able to offer them the job.

If you use these tips, you will be able to find the best employee for your business. Well, I guarantee that you've heard each one of these before, sometimes I think it's best that we get back to the basics and not try to reinvent the wheel. Some of the best companies on the planet have been built in the last 20 years, and they all follow the simple steps I've included in the previous sections.

Standard Hiring Process

The standard hiring process typically follows these steps:

1. Job posting: The hiring manager creates a job posting that outlines the position's duties, responsibilities, and qualifications.
2. Recruitment: The hiring manager recruits candidates for the position through a variety of methods, such as online job boards, social media, and employee referrals.
3. Screening: The hiring manager screens candidates' resumes and cover letters to narrow down the pool of applicants.
4. Interviewing: The hiring manager interviews the top candidates to assess their skills, experience, and fit for the role.
5. Decision-making: The hiring manager makes a decision about which candidate to hire.
6. Onboarding: The hiring manager works with the chosen candidate to get them started in their new role.

The standard hiring process is very effective, but it's important to be aware of some of the bad hiring practices that can occur during the hiring process. Here are a few examples:

- Hiring without a clear job description and expectations: This can lead to hiring the wrong person for the job and hiring for the wrong skills.
- Not using a variety of recruiting methods in the hiring process: This can limit the pool of candidates and make it more difficult to find the right person for the role. Make sure to try internal and external recruiting methods, local job boards, communities, and social networks to find candidates you may not be privy to on large job boards like Indeed and other mainstream sites.
- Not screening candidates carefully: This can lead to hiring someone who is not qualified for the job.
- Not interviewing each of the top candidates carefully with an open mind: This can lead to missing out on the best candidate for the job and hurt CX.
- Making a hiring decision based on gut feeling: This can lead to hiring someone who is not the best fit for the role. Objective hiring is always the best way for any defined role.

Avoid these bad hiring practices and you can increase your chances of finding the right person for the role. We also recommend using a video interview platform that integrates well with/ or is powered by Ai. In recent years as technology has become the human supercharger, we are able to efficiently and accurately assess candidates in a fraction of the time, while also enabling more inclusive hiring practices.

Inclusive Hiring Practices

"Inclusion" is about creating a workplace where everyone feels welcome, valued, and respected. It's about creating an environment where everyone feels that they can contribute, that they matter and that they can reach their own potential without traits that are personal to them standing in the way as barriers to their momentum.

There are a number of things you can do to create inclusive hiring practices to make sure everyone feels welcome. Here are a few tips:

- Develop a diversity and inclusion hiring strategy: This strategy should outline your goals for diversity and inclusion in your workforce, as well as the steps you will take to achieve those goals. This step should also include identifying an internal or external champion free from biases.
- Promote diversity and inclusion in recruitment and on your teams: This includes using a variety of recruiting methods to reach a diverse pool of candidates, as well as using inclusive language in your job postings and on your social networks.
- Adopt diversity hiring best practices: These practices include using blind hiring, which means that candidates' names and other identifying information are removed from their resumes, and conducting structured interviews, which means that all candidates are asked the same questions.
- Write inclusive job descriptions with realistic expectations: Inclusive job descriptions are clear, concise, and above all, free of bias. They should focus on the skills and experience required for the job, rather than on gender, race, or other personal characteristics.

Creating an inclusive workplace is about more than just hiring diverse candidates; it's also about creating an environment that makes everyone feel welcome and valued. Check out our interview intelligence software to see more tips on creating an inclusive workplace.

Hiring Process Example

So let's look at an example hiring process to view more ways we can build inclusive hiring practices into our companies. The decision to hire a new employee is a big deal for any company today. With hiring costs skyrocketing, and employees "quiet quitting" the cost-benefit analysis can be overwhelming.

The most important aspect of the process is setting clear expectations upfront when an employer decides to hire a new employee. This means having clear hiring process steps and hiring process examples that HR and recruiters can reference as a guide anytime they need a refresher.

Here is an example of a hiring process:

1. Job posting: The first step is to create a job posting that outlines the position's duties, responsibilities, and qualifications. The job posting should be clear, concise, and easy to understand.
2. Recruitment: Once the job posting is created, it's time to start recruiting candidates. There are a number of ways to recruit candidates, including online job boards, social media, and employee referrals.
3. Screening: Once you've received a pool of candidates, it's time to start screening them. This can be done by reviewing resumes and cover letters, conducting phone interviews, and/or asking candidates to complete assessments.
4. Interviewing: The next step is to interview the top candidates. This is your chance to get to know the candidates and assess their skills, experience, and fit for the role.
5. Decision-making: Once you've interviewed the candidates, it's time to make a decision about who to hire. This decision should be based on the candidate's qualifications, fit for the role, and your company's needs.

‍Pillar can automate many of these steps for teams that need to hire fast, but still require a structured process that gets great results. Schedule a demo to see how we do it!

Here are some things to consider while creating your selection criteria for hiring employees:

- Be clear about your hiring needs: Before you start recruiting, be clear about what you're looking for in a candidate. This will help you narrow down the pool of candidates and focus on the ones who are the best fit for the job.
- Use various recruiting methods: Don't rely on just one method. Use a variety of methods to reach a wider pool of candidates.
- Be objective in your hiring decisions: Avoid making hiring decisions based on gut feeling or personal bias. Instead, base your decisions on the candidate's qualifications, experience, and fit for the role.
- Put hiring policies in place to ensure fairness: Hiring Policy Examples will look different for each company but they should include things like representation on panel interviews, structuring the interview process, post-interview feedback, and a clear criteria and decision-making process.
- Provide feedback to all candidates: Even if you don't select a candidate for the job, it's important to provide them with feedback. This will help them improve their job search skills and increase their chances of finding a job in the future.

In the end, the people that we hire will define our success as a company. Once a founder and their first round of hires are in place, the company culture begins to take shape. The biggest challenge a company will face is the third and fourth rounds of hires - since the vision of the founder and management style of the CEO are difficult to transfer multiple layers down the org chart. Because of this companies need to create great hiring practices or implement solutions like Pillar which have proven to lower employee turnover and increase diversity hiring.  

Investing in the right tools or processes will ensure that everyone feels welcome and accepted and this feeling goes a long way when creating a fast-moving team. Book your demo of Pillar to see how our interview intelligence solution can supercharge your hiring.