The Ultimate Hiring Guide

A bad hire could cost a company over £100,000, and financial loss isn’t the only problem. Recruiting the wrong person can have a negative impact on staff morale and productivity too. That’s why making the right hire the first time around is so important. This guide will take you through all the key steps of setting up and executing a successful hiring strategy. If you’re new to recruitment, you can use it as a starting point for developing your own hiring process. If not, look at it as a handy refresher. It may even offer new insights or approaches to include in your existing recruitment toolbox.And if you’re looking to hire right now, make sure to read more about how JobLookup can help recruiters and employers find the ideal candidate.

1. Deep Dive into the Job Spec

Whether you’re creating the job specs yourself or receiving them from a client, taking the time to fully understand what a role is about is a fundamental first step. The information outlined in the job spec will help you build a clear picture of your ideal applicant and what skills, traits, and experience they should have. You’ll also have a better understanding of where this role fits into the wider team and organisation. This may take a little research and time spent talking to colleagues or the client, but this groundwork will pay dividends later.

It’s also important to identify whether the role is best suited to temporary, permanent, or contract staff. For instance, having a hotshot contractor might be an excellent short term solution to get an isolated project up and running. On the flip side, a contractor won’t be the best option if you want to find someone who can be trained and retained by the company long term.

By the way, the job specification isn’t the same as the job description. Instead of describing the job, the job spec focuses on the ideal candidate for the role.

2. Legal Considerations

Before you go any further, it’s worth checking that your hiring process ticks all the boxes when it comes to UK law compliance. These legal considerations will affect the entire recruitment journey, including the way you talk about the vacancy, how you handle applications, and interview conditions. These are the main legal considerations when hiring new staff:

• avoiding discrimination by creating an inclusive and fair hiring process
• carrying out right to work checks to make sure that candidates are eligible to work in the UK
• handling candidate information responsibly in accordance with UK data protection laws
• carrying out DBS checks for roles that involve vulnerable individuals or regulated sectors
• making sure that a safe and healthy environment is provided for in-person interviews and meetings
• offering a salary that meets with or exceeds the national minimum wage or national living wage, and providing at least the statutory employment benefits

Complying with these legal requirements will not only protect your business but also create a fair and professional hiring process.

3. Define your Ideal Candidate

Now you have a clear picture of what skills, experience, and qualifications are essential or preferred for the role, you can start to create a concept of the ideal candidate. The JobLookup guide on how to find the perfect candidate can help you identify the common qualities that are likely to be a fit for almost any role.

Once you have both general and more specialised skills, qualities, and experience locked down, take some time to consider soft skills and personality types as well. Would the role you’re hiring for suit an extroverted personality type, or should you instead consider hiring an introvert? Are you looking for a candidate with excellent communication, leadership, or creative skills?

Considering how and why you should hire neurodiverse candidates for a role can also be valuable. This approach promotes inclusivity and diversity in the workplace, but also provides an improved candidate experience for everyone, regardless of whether they’re neurodiverse or neurotypical.

Finally, think about how the candidate’s values and working style could align with your company culture.

4. Refine the Candidate Experience

There’s a strong argument to suggest that you should be thinking about candidate experience before you even begin to look at a job spec. You can find out more in our article about why a good candidate experience is essential when hiring. It’s also important to consider how you can tailor and refine the candidate experience for each role.

Sticking to these basic five steps to a standout candidate experience makes for a solid start, but don’t be afraid to assess and refine the process to make it as tailored as possible. This approach can greatly improve the recruitment experience for candidates.

A good candidate experience is important because it leaves a lasting impression of your company or agency, no matter the outcome. A positive experience is not only a powerful way to promote your brand. It also leaves the door open for candidates who might be suitable for another role in the future. Why burn bridges when you can build them?

5. Write The Job Description and the Job Advert

Now that the foundations for your hiring process are securely locked down, it’s time to craft two of the most important elements of the hiring process: the job description and the job advert. While they’re closely related, understanding their distinct purposes is key to attracting the right candidates.

Start with the job description. A good job description acts as the blueprint for your hiring needs. It should clearly outline the role’s responsibilities, expectations, and qualifications, without overwhelming the reader with unnecessary jargon. For more help, read our guide on how to write human friendly and inclusive job descriptions to attract top talent.

Next up is the job advert. The job advert builds on the job description to attract the attention of potential candidates. Bad quality jobs ads are one of those things everyone in the industry is aware of, and yet we still see them all over the internet. Luckily, most of the common problems with job ads are easy to resolve. Reading our guide on how to engage potential candidates effectively through your job ad will get you off to a solid start.

One thing to consider is that while using some role or industry-specific slang might be unavoidable, it’s better to keep potentially alienating phrases or terminology to a minimum. Almost 70% of UK jobseekers want clearer job adverts so it’s always best to jettison job post jargon from your ads.

6. Leverage Your Networks

Now your well-written and jargon-free job ad is ready to read, it’s time to consider how and where to promote it. Job boards and job search engines are a good first port of call, given that around 70% of UK jobseekers use them when job hunting. Unlike job boards, where employers post jobs directly, job search engines – sometimes called job aggregators – pull listings from multiple sites. This makes it easier for candidates to explore opportunities and for employers to reach a broader audience.

Start by using your ATS to post to a mixture of generalist boards like JobLookup and more specialist boards. For more on this, check out our bitesize guide to ATS integration with JobLookup.

Taking the time to complete your company profile on any job board you use is a good way to maximise the value of your online job postings. For more insights, explore our guide on three ways to optimise your job postings.

Social media is also a crucial part of any modern recruitment strategy. In fact, social platforms are now second only to job boards in popularity among jobseekers. Research suggests that around 80% of applicants use social media platforms to help with their job hunt. Research also shows that over 70% of recruiters find social media effective in reducing the time it takes to fill non-management roles. It’s easy to see why sharing your job content on social platforms is essential.

That said, not all platforms are equal. LinkedIn, for example, is arguably the best overall option for job posting. But that’s not to say that other platforms can’t be useful too.

Our guide on using socials as part of your recruitment strategy goes into more depth on how to get the best value and reach across all platforms.

7. Review Applicants to find the Best Matches

Once CVs start flooding in, even with the help of screening systems, assessing each CV individually can be the most challenging part of the recruitment process.

Knowing what to look for greatly increases your efficiency. It’s one of the reasons that doing the groundwork on the job spec is so important. It means that you already have a good idea of what qualities are essential when reading through CVs with a finer eye. While there will be an obvious focus on education, qualifications, and experience (read our four key factors for spotting true talent when assessing these areas), don’t overlook the candidate’s soft skills.

Traits like empathy, communication skills, emotional intelligence, and willingness to learn can be extremely valuable attributes. They’re generally excellent indicators of how a candidate will develop, contribute, and shape company culture in the long term. In some cases, these qualities are arguably more important than experience.

However, applicants are much more tech-savvy these days and some of them will try to fool the system as a result. The best way to combat this is by staying alert for potential red flags. If a CV is excessively long or very short for, example, this could indicate underlying problems such as bad organisational skills, an inability to communicate well, a lack of experience, or even dishonesty. Read our guide on five CV warning signs for more insight into what else to look out for when assessing a CV.

Once you’ve narrowed down the field to the strongest contenders, take one final look at their CVs to check that their qualifications and experience are right for the role and the company. This will make sure that you’re spending your valuable interviewing time wisely.

8. Interviews, Tests and Assessments

From a candidate’s perspective, interviews are without doubt the most stressful part of the recruitment process. Research makes it clear that high pressure interviews where candidates are grilled are completely unproductive for both the applicant and the employer. On the other hand, interviews that are overly relaxed or lack structure can fail to get the information you need. Striking the right balance between thorough assessment and a supportive atmosphere is key to holding productive interviews that benefit both sides.

When considering how to interview your candidates, keep the overall candidate experience front of mind. Are you interviewing anyone that has any special needs, for example? If the role is one that requires specific skills, is it worth including a practical test of these skills during the interview or separately?

Instead of simply following a standard interview template, tailor your approach to the candidates you’re meeting, the role’s demands, and the company culture to conduct the most effective job interview you can.

Testing is also a great way to learn about candidate skills and qualities. It’s easy to overlook a superb candidate who struggles to promote themselves. Offering them a test to prove what they can do is an excellent alternative.

Gamified psychometric testing and other assessments can be completed outside or before the interview. This will avoid overloading a candidate on the day. It also provides you with some additional insight into your applicants before you meet them face to face.

9. Effective Follow Up

You’ve found the right candidate and have made them a job offer, but the hiring process isn’t over yet. The next stage is to follow up with both the chosen applicant and unsuccessful candidates too.

As with everything else during the recruitment process, following up is an important element of creating a good candidate experience. It can also provide valuable insight into your hiring process. Asking how successful candidates found the experience can help you discover the goods, the okays, and the bads of their overall experience.

Ghosting candidates if they’re not successful at any stage of the process, on the other hand, is damaging for several reasons. First, it leaves them with a bad impression of you as a recruiter or company. Second, it makes them much less likely to consider applying for a role with you again.

Send a short follow up email thanking the candidate for their time and encouraging them to follow your company or reach out if they are looking for additional opportunities. By doing this, you gain two things: a positive experience that translates into free word of mouth marketing, and a candidate on your books who may be perfect for another role.

10. Effective Follow Up

Now is the time to reflect on your overall recruitment process, and any feedback you received from clients, managers, and candidates. What worked? What didn’t work?

The trick to optimising your hiring process is having the ability to build solid but flexible foundations. There’s always something new to learn. By ironing out problem areas while reinforcing the successes of your strategy, you’ll end up with a streamlined and efficient framework that can quickly adapt to any new hiring challenges or client requirements.

If you’re launching a new hiring plan, find out how JobLookup can help you connect with top candidates. If you have any questions, head over to the JobLookup employer FAQ.

We hope you found this guide helpful. Let us know if you have any insights you think we’ve missed.