Hiring for the first time? Start here

Congrats, you're hiring your first employee.

Interviewing for a job is stressful, whichever side of the table you’re on. But when you’re a new hiring manager, faced with the challenge of trying to hire the perfect employee off a piece of paper and hour-long conversation, stress takes on a whole new meaning. Given the high cost of a bad hire, you know you need to get it right the first time to avoid rebooting the hiring process. Having to re-hire, retrain, and retain a new employee costs time and money you don’t have.

Whether it’s your first time hiring or you just need a better process, there are a few key things you need to know to make your hiring process effective. Here are 7 helpful tips to help you manage this complex process and, in the end, land a great new team member!

Define Success Within Your Team and in the Job Description

If you don’t know what you’re looking for, how will you find it? This is not a hypothetical question. Before you ever post an ad or look at a resume, you have to know the requirements, duties, and hard and soft skills necessary for the role you’re hiring for. Understanding the position well is a prerequisite to a great job description.

It helps when candidates know what you’re looking for, too! A clear, accurate, and compelling job description should tell a candidate everything they need to know about whether they are the right fit for the role. Clearly identify the job responsibilities and expectations to help candidates decide whether to apply as well as weed out those people who don’t match your needs.

You’ll appreciate later the time and effort you put in now, as the precise description will lead to better qualified candidates and help you draft focused interview questions.

Create a Clear, Consistent Hiring Process

Once you know what you’re looking for, you can decide how you’ll evaluate the candidates. It’s important to conduct consistent interviews and evaluate all candidates using the same criteria.

We typically recommend breaking the position into three key needs:

• Basic requirements: things like physical location and college degree (if necessary for the role versus a preferred attribute)
• Necessary hard skills: project management experience, critical software knowledge, or language proficiency, etc.
• Preferences for soft skills: level of autonomy, communication style, etc.

Then, you can develop questions or other assessments that identify whether candidates have the required combination of skills and attitude.

Be consistent! Ask the same questions and use the same processes for all candidates. For example, you should conduct phone screen or Skype interviews for both in-state and out-of-state candidates, no exceptions.

Next up: What are your responsibilities as a hiring manager?