Today's workforce shortages have shifted the way many companies run their recruitment and selection process. Recently I read a statistic that showed up to 75% workforce shortages in many key industries and that only 15% of the job postings on large job boards like LinkedIn, Monster, CareerBuilder, and Indeed are filled.

But before we get into why this may be happening, what is a recruitment and selection process? The selection process in recruitment is a way to identify the best-qualified candidates for a particular job or position in an organization. In this article, I will provide some tips on how to create effective recruitment and selection processes, selection process steps, and creating a hiring criteria checklist.

Importance of Recruitment and Selection:

Recruitment and selection is an important process for any company, as it helps to ensure the right person is chosen for the job. The ability to adequately assess a candidate's skills, knowledge, competencies, values, and attitude will ultimately determine whether they are successful in their role or not.

Recruitment and selection decisions should be based on a candidate's character, talents, abilities, and potential to contribute to the organization. Organizations must be thorough in their assessment of candidates by examining evidence-based criteria during the recruitment and selection processes.

One of the things I've found interesting is how few companies actually test someone's real-world abilities to perform well in a role before sending an offer letter. This should be a vital step in your recruitment and selection process.

Let's use an example for clarity. You're hiring your second Enterprise Account Executive, and you know that they will need to be proficient with your outreach tech stack, need to understand outreach structures and best practices, and have the right attitude to work well with your team. They also need sales skills and to know how to plan their quarters for the most optimum closing rate.

You could create a series of tests or simulations that will allow you to assess whether a candidate has the skills needed for the job. These tests should be tailored to your business goals, so make sure you do your research before creating these criteria. This is also an excellent way to gauge how well candidates perform in a given role and if they have the necessary skills required to do so.

This may sound like a foreign concept but the more you can prove someone's abilities before they join your organization, the better you can predict their success.

Another resource that will be a great help in the recruitment and selection process is interview intelligence software. interview intelligence software is a platform that offers objective, evidence-based scores of candidates based on their performance in interviews. These applications (and others like them) are designed to assess candidates’ skills, knowledge, and potential. They can also provide a more in-depth understanding of the candidate's technical abilities.

This technology can be used to compare the responses of different candidates and determine how well each one did. Companies can use this data to make smarter decisions during recruitment and selection as they will have a better understanding of which candidate might fit best into the role or position they are trying to fill.

Recruitment Process

In this section, let's look at an example recruitment process- but before we do, this recruitment and selection process example is generic, and you may need additional steps or criteria for your organization.

Steps for Recruitment and Selection Process:

1. Create Job Description: The first step of the process is to create a detailed job description. It should include the job title, duties, requirements, qualifications, and any other relevant information about the position.
2. Identify Qualifications: This step involves identifying what skills or qualifications are needed for the role. Companies should consider factors such as education, experience, language proficiency, and any other relevant credentials.
3. Screen Applicants: After identifying the qualifications, the next step is to screen applicants for suitability. This can be done by reviewing resumes, conducting interviews, or administering tests.
4. Make Offer: After evaluating all of the applications, organizations should select the most suitable candidate and make an offer.
5. Onboarding Process: The final step is to onboard the new employee through an orientation and training program. This will help familiarize them with company policies and procedures, as well as their job duties.

It's vital to ensure that you at least cover all of these steps. Recruitment and selection importance is high, probably the highest priority in your organization as it affects the company’s bottom line. The recruitment process steps are specifically designed to help you create an incredible team. Hiring qualified and talented employees and keeping them happy and engaged will help contribute to greater productivity, higher quality of work, and overall better performance. important to note that this process can vary from organization to organization, and may include additional steps or criteria as needed.

Creating a connected and effective recruitment and selection process will ensure that you're using an objective model to hire the right people for the role every time.

Before we get into creating hiring criteria and a checklist, let's talk about the potential impact of creating an effective selection process. Think 10 years down the road, what do you want your company to look like? What culture do you want to have and what kind of people should be involved? What do you want your customers to feel when they interact with your brand? All of these things and many more will be defined by the people your recruitment process selects.

Your recruitment and selection process should evolve along with your company so that it continues to meet the changing needs of your organization. Make sure you consider all aspects of the process when developing criteria, including compensation, performance management, onboarding, training, and more. This will help ensure that your team is consistently meeting its goals and objectives.

Hiring Criteria Checklist

So, let's put together your hiring criteria and your hiring criteria checklist. First, your hiring criteria- we realize that hiring for tech is often far more complex than hiring in traditional industries. For instance, if you needed to hire a welder with T.I.G. experience on aluminum joints, you could simply check for that on a resume and in the interview- maybe take the candidate out to the shop and let them have a go on some junk pieces to see first-hand the quality of their work. But when it comes to tech, you need to know what technical skills they have, how they can use them, and whether or not they’ll be successful with your outreach tech stack.

When creating your hiring criteria example for each role, think about the qualities and skills you need from a candidate – such as creativity, problem-solving, technology experience, or familiarity with certain tools. When creating your hiring criteria checklist, consider factors such as the candidate’s education, work history, technical skills, and personality.

The hiring criteria should also include tests that measure the candidate's expertise in working with software/tools relevant to the role they are applying for. These tests or assessments typically involve coding challenges, problem-solving puzzles, and other technical tasks that measure a candidate's ability to think on their feet.

Once you have your hiring criteria in place, it’s time to create a hiring checklist. A recent startup that I worked for had a checklist template for every single candidate. During the interview process, a candidate would be asked a series of questions to see how they ranked on a scale of 1- 10. This checklist was designed to help the company ensure that each candidate was a good fit for the role they were applying for.

Typical categories would include:

1. Past performance meeting similar requirements to what we'd expect of them
2. Relevant experience
3. Technical skills
4. Problem-solving ability and critical thinking
5. Communication abilities - both written & verbal
6. Interpersonal and teamwork skills
7. Flexibility and adaptability to change

The hiring criteria and checklist can be adjusted as needed, and customized to better fit the open roles that you're currently hiring for, but it’s important to make sure that these two steps are part of your recruitment and selection process to find the best candidates for your team. Incorporating these steps into your recruitment and selection process can help you build a strong, diverse, and talented team that will take your organization to the next level.

Finally, it's important to remember that recruitment is an ongoing process. Even after hiring the right person for the job, employers should continue to invest in their employees by providing them with regular feedback and opportunities for growth and development. This will ensure that your team remains engaged and motivated, resulting in a more productive and successful organization.

By investing the time to create an effective recruitment process, you can find the perfect people for your organization and make sure they stay with you for the long haul. With a solid recruitment strategy in place, your company will be well-positioned for success.

To see how Pillar can help you streamline your recruitment and selection process with AI-powered interview intelligence software, schedule your demo today!