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THIS WEEK
Recruitment Interviewing 101
ALSO IN THIS EDITION
| HR Tip: Recruitment Interviewing 101 |
It has been estimated by the Society of HRM, Saratoga Institute that the cost of a bad hire is 1-2 time the employee's annual salary. There is the cost of any termination payments, cost of hiring including advertising and recruiters costs, the administration time and lost time of your involvement not to mention that any new person is only at best 60% productive for the first few months while they learn the ropes.
It pays to get your hiring decisions right from the beginning. Hiring a new employee doesn't have to be stressful or challenging. With a bit of preparation and work you will be more likely to hire the perfect person for your role.
 So here are my top 10 tips for recruitment interviewing:
Prepare for the process: Before you advertise, take time to review the role and what you are looking for. Write down the skills and experience a high performer in the role will need to have, as well as the qualities that you are looking for in a great employee. These become your selection criteria – the things you measure each candidate against to check their match.
Set time aside: Book time into your diary to review applications, make appointments and interview candidates. Unless you schedule in uninterrupted time you will rush through the process and make poor choices.
Work out what's in it for the candidate: Be clear why your business and this role is a great opportunity for candidates. You need to convince people to apply these days – so work out why you stand out from other employers.
Listen more than you speak: When you get to the interviewing stage, you want to listen to the candidate more than you speak. Ask questions and don't be afraid to probe for more information. Listen to tone of voice, ease of answering and clarity of answers.
Aim to get the best out of each candidate: You want each candidate to show you the best they can be. This is not a competition to see how they perform under pressure – any interview is by itself a stressful situation. Work out ways to make it easy for them which could include giving them the main questions you are going to ask a few minutes before they come into the interview.
Take notes: After a long day of interviewing it is hard to remember exactly who said what. Try and take verbatim notes of answers as it helps when you are comparing candidates.
Make sure your questions are legal: All questions must comply with anti-discrimination legislation. This means you can't ask questions about things such as age, marital status, if they have a disability, if they are pregnant or planning to become pregnant, if they are gay, if they are union members, their childcare arrangements or their religious beliefs.
Tell the truth: Don't try and oversell a role or dance around negative parts of the job. You are more likely to get and retain the right candidate if you paint an honest portrait of the role and all it involves.
Make your next steps clear: Be clear to candidates on the next steps of the process. If you are going to conduct referee checks (and you should), check the contact details of referees. Explain when you will be making your decision and how you will contact them.
Keep your process fast: The best candidates don't stay on the market long. If your recruitment process drags on you are likely to lose them. Aim for a quick yet thorough process, no more than 7 days in length from time of close of applications to decision.
There are a lot of factors that go into a success recruitment process. If you keep these 10 foundation points in mind you will be more likely to achieve the results you are looking for in filling your role.
| Marketing Tip - Christmas Cards |
Lots of businesses send Christmas cards to their customers and suppliers. This year consider sending a Happy New Year's card instead to stand out from the pack.
Whatever you decide to send, you can include some other useful information with your card such as a copy of your most recent newsletter, a great article or a special offer.
Some businesses now prefer to send electronic cards as a way of being kind to the environment, rather than the traditional paper cards.
Whatever you do, keep it light, fun and in the spirit of the season.
I have spoken about Fullframe Photographics before and how brilliant they are.
Check out these great photos ...and then call Michael from Fullframe 1300 727 306 for your next corporate photos (they are also exceptional for product shots and construction photos).
As we lead up to Christmas, the release by Amazon of wrap rage free toy packaging is a brilliant advance. You can also check out the sometimes very funny gallery of wrap rage videos and photos.
 Jo Pollard from Wild Dog Designs has done it again with some great offers for Heart Harmony readers
Offer 1: Marketing Flyers with FREE DELIVERY
5000 DL flyers – $200 + GST
5000 A5 flyers – $220 + GST
5000 A4 flyers – $370 + GST
Print Specifications: Full Colour, single sided, 80gsm gloss
Offer 2: Greeting Cards or Thank you Cards with FREE envelopes + FREE DELIVERY
These are great for producing your own personalised card for your business. Create a generic design so you can use it for lots of different occasions through out the entire year.... Christmas, New financial year, thank you for our referral, Welcome to our business, thank you for doing business ... the ideas are endless.
500 DL Cards – $474 + GST
1000 DL Cards – $544 + GST
2000 DL Cards – $787 + GST
Print Specifications: Gloss coated one side, full colour printing 1 or 2 sides, 310gsm Gloss Stock, DL Size – Width: 210mm X Height: 99mm.
These great offers are for printing only - and I can fully recommend Jo to create brilliant graphic design for your promotional materials.
This offer is available to anyone in Australia and includes delivery BUT it is only available until COB Friday 14th November. You have to pay on placement of your order.
To order call Jo on (07) 3325 2265 or email info@wilddogdesigns.com.au
How to Get Your Office to Flow - Special guest article by Julie McLeod from Kharma Consulting.
exuberantly yours
Ingrid
Heart Harmony
PS: This week's Small Business Tips blog also included posts about Lessons from 4 Ingredients and the Power (drain) of Search Engines.
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