Recruiting The Diamond In The Rough

Twenty years ago, recruiting the perfect talent for your open job position was a relatively easy task. Simply print your job vacancy in the local newspaper, talk to your circle of connections, and wait for the right candidate to walk through the front door. While the number of potential candidates was limited and local, the process was simple and efficient.

Today, it can seem perfect to hire with the idea of throwing out an application to a job site like Indeed, ZipRecruiter, or even a school district job board. The perfect candidate can be found in a different city, state, or country. Without limits, the perfect candidate has to be out there, right?

Yes, the perfect applicant is out there, but they certainly aren’t easy to find.

IMAGE: UNSPLASH

The flipside to online applications is that applicants can now apply for dozens of jobs all around the world in less than an hour. At times, applicants have admitted to throwing their applications out there, everywhere, and hoping that something sticks.

In other words, when in the past only serious applicants would walk through your front door to ask for an interview, now someone halfway across the world can throw their name in your applicant pool. This makes it impossible to know which, or how many applicants would make the perfect fit.

In fact, each corporate job offer gets about 250 applicants. Unless you have a full-time job of combing through these applications, odds are the process will not be thorough, and the diamond in the rough will be passed up.

What can you do to make sure you are recruiting the right applicant?

Be Very Specific In The Job Description

“Clearly defined job roles will eliminate any kind of dilemma. It will help an employee better understand what they are supposed to achieve as a part of their job description.” – Pooja Agnihotri

While it takes extra time to lay out the ins and outs of the job that you are trying to fill, taking the extra 45 minutes will not only save you hours of filtering through dozens of unqualified applications, but it will scare away many of the applicants who are throwing their resume at every ‘Apply Now’ button.

Being specific in the job description will force applicants to take a few minutes to read through it all. While it doesn’t have to be a 2,000-word description, for every 10 seconds of reading you add, you get rid of more applicants that don’t need to be applying.

A few ideas of what to include:

A detailed overview of the job
At least 8-10 very specific job requirements
Education requirements (this is huge)
Skills needed
Background
Anything else relevant to the position

Have Someone Else Go Through The Applications

Yes, we get it, you want to hire the right person and you don’t trust someone else to do it for you. And who could blame you? After all, the potential recruit will be working for you, not them.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t receive help. There are recruiting agencies that will literally narrow down the applicants for you and that is what they do every day. And guess what? At the end of the day, it is still your company and you decide who ends up working for you if you disagree with them.

Look, you are a great business owner. But just like you don’t want a firefighter performing brain surgery, you probably don’t want to try to tackle all 250+ applications by yourself. Letting a professional outsider help will save you money and help you immensely to be confident in your final decision.

Good Luck

Hiring a new recruit for your business can be scary. You are looking to give a portion of the money you bring in to someone who you don’t know anything about as well as share private information about your company. But utilizing the tips mentioned can help you know that you have selected the right recruit.