March 16, 2022

This paid piece is sponsored by Eide Bailly LLP.

By Lauri Dahlberg, PHR, SHRM-CP and Kari Yonke, CSC, FCRA Basic Certification, FCRA Advanced Certification, PI Analyst

A version of this article originally appeared on eidebailly.com.

The jobless rate in the Sioux Falls business community is lower than ever, with unemployment rates hovering around 2 percent. There is fierce competition for workers. While the need for staffing is growing, employers can’t afford to simply settle for the first applicant that walks in the door. So how do you find the best hire? Some of the challenges organizations face when searching for top talent are beyond their control; however, many other challenges can be controlled by focusing on talent as a strategic initiative rather than an afterthought.

When it comes to setting up your organization’s hiring process, the following best practices can set you up for success:

• Utilizing a third party to assist in your search.
• Establishing a consistent recruitment process to follow each time you have a need to hire.
• Including the right people in the interview to ensure the proper questions are asked and important information is shared.

Hiring a third party

Although there is a cost associated with third-party assistance, it’s often worth it to save time and ensure an efficient and professional hiring process. There are two types of external assistance: headhunters and placement consultants. Both can help you find qualified candidates and make informed hires. They may sound like the same thing with different titles, but these two professional services are really quite different.

A headhunter actively seeks out, cold calls and recruits candidates on behalf of the business that hired them. Placement consultants, on the other hand, focus on the internal process of hiring. In other words, the headhunter brings in the candidates — who may or may not even be active job seekers — while the placement consultant does the heavy lifting work normally carried out by a full HR team.

What’s the better option? In most cases, a placement consultant will end up saving you more time and more money, while also delivering top-tier candidates for you — the business doing the hiring — to choose from in the end.

How to find right placement consultant

It’s important to remember that your relationship with a placement consultant should be collaborative. Your placement consultant should understand your organization, your culture and the overall goals of your business. Composing a formal job description, determining an appropriate salary range for your marketplace, and searching and screening candidates are all part of the collaborative process.

Internal hiring procedures

If you plan to keep your hiring procedures internal, consistency and preparation are key. Hiring is one of the biggest investments an organization can make, and approaching that investment inconsistently or unprepared can be costly.

The first step in preparing is determining the actual hiring need. A company can’t find the right person if they don’t know what skills or experience they are looking for in the first place. Strong organizations will look at their current employees to see if there are skills or expertise that can be utilized differently so that true skill or expertise gaps can be identified. Recruitment of staff with those skills and expertise will help round out the team and make the organization more successful.

When it comes time for interviews, including the right people in the interview process is crucial. Successful recruitment processes allow candidates to interact with company representatives at various levels to ensure different perspectives are shared and important information is gained. At a minimum, an organization should include individuals at the peer, management and executive levels to allow the potential new hire the opportunity to connect with enough people so they can picture themselves working for the company.

Each person involved in the interview should have standard interview questions to ask and specific information to share so that the candidate leaves the interview with an overall picture of the organization and the interviewers leave the interview with information to determine if the candidate is the right fit for the position and organization.

Interview process best practices

It is important for anyone involved with interviewing potential new hires to understand the complete recruitment/hiring process and their role in that process. Organizations should provide interviewers with the standard questions to ask and the list of topics they should cover during their segment of the interview to ensure that candidates are able to tell the company all about their skills and experience while receiving a good overview of the company, department, position and benefits.

Whether you choose to seek a third-party consultant or keep your recruitment and hiring practices in-house, it is important to an organization’s success that you strive for a consistent and efficient hiring process. By doing so, you can be sure you are finding the best talent available to fill your positions and can get back to business focused on your long-term goals.

To learn more about better human resources practices, visit eidebailly.com.