How to Hire Online

You’re super busy.  You need someone doing the work now!

Now is when you have to fight the urge to take the first warm body you feel might be qualified to do some work and instead find the right person to get the job done.

OK, so where to begin?

First, decide what type of person you need:  Success is rarely found via a resume.  Resumes tell you what someone has done and not who they are.  What you need is the right type of person to do your job - a perfect fit.  I’m not saying their experience isn’t relevant - it’s just that experience alone doesn’t tell the full story of what you’re getting.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do I need a leader or just someone good at following instructions?
• Will this person be interacting with customers?
• Will they mostly work in a team or autonomously?
• Do I need a problem solver or a doer?
• Do I need someone innovative and creative or someone who is organized?
• How motivated do I want them to be?  What should motivate them?
• Is this the full potential of the job or is there potential to move up and/or take on more responsibility in the future?

There are obviously trade-offs with anyone you hire.  The answers to these questions start to provide a basic framework for the type of person you’re looking for.  At Careerious we have separate models for representing who the person is that we’re looking for and for defining the minimum skills and experience that person must have.  When we combine those two elements in our decision process, we usually end up with a much better hire.  We’ve also learned the hard way what happens when we’ve skipped part of this exercise.

Once you’ve outlined what this person should look like, compare that to the people currently doing the job well.  If you don’t have anyone currently doing the job well, ask some of your employees that will be working with this person what they think.  It may be helpful in both further defining the role as well as having your team feel like they were part of the process.

OK, so now you’re done with the most difficult part - you know what you need.  Now comes the easy part which is to spell it out in a document.

You need to create a standard/consistent job description to describe your job internally and externally.  We use the following job description template to help.  Make sure you spell out the job today along with the career potential.  Also, make sure to include both who you’re looking for as well as the type of experience that person should have.

Next week we’ll explain the need for a clear and consistent (and legal) process for hiring.

I think there are a few ways hiring online is different from traditional hiring.  Some of the differences are at a real foundation level, while others are at a more “cost savings” level, if you know what I mean.

Traditional hiring:

1. Pay $ for job posting somewhere (i.e. newspaper, etc.)
2. Manually screen resumes for “qualified” applicants.
3. Rely heavily on “gut” to make hiring decisions, with unpredictable results.
4. You win some, you lose some.

Hiring online:

1. Post job on Craigslist or Kijiji, surf Facebook or LinkedIn for candidates, or generate employee referrals via email.  All free.
2. Use technology to automatically screen applicants.  (I’m biased, since this is what we do.)
3. Automatic screening uses science to help you decide which candidates are best-suited, leading to consistent, predictable results.
4. You win *most* of the time.

Net result of hiring online?

1. Less expensive to generate interest in your job posting, but this means you’ll get a lot of “crap” resumes and people who do not fit.  Good news is there are technologies that screen these
2. You’ll cast a wider net for job candidates, finding people in places you’ve never thought about … so don’t be biased.
3. Take less time to find the perfect candidates, before you lose them to the competition.
4. You’ll turn fewer people over … fewer bad hires means more cost savings and higher revenue.

What are your challenges with this new approach?

1. Lose your fear of applicant volume - more is better, if you have technology on your side.
2. Have confidence in the technology - trust that it can do some of the work for you.
3. Stop asking to shortlist 5 candidates before you start interviewing - your candidates will be better, so it might take only 2 candidates to hire one!
4. Make hiring decisions based on who will perform the job best - not whom you like the most.

Sorry for all the numbers, but I thought that might make this easier to reference.

Next week we’ll help you decide what type of person you need for your job … and how to define your job around those requirements.

Welcome to our first blog post for “How to Hire Online!”  Every week, Jamie and I will be posting our thoughts, experiences and research on improving hiring.  We’ll have a particular focus on small business hiring and using online tools to save time and money.

Why are we doing this?  Because hiring is critical to the success of every business, but employers often waste time with – and even hire - people who don’t fit their jobs.  We realized that hiring isn’t just a “big company” problem either – it’s actually far MORE critical for small business to get it right.  However, most small businesses rely heavily on their gut to make hiring decisions, with very unpredictable (a.k.a. bad) results.

So about a year ago, Jamie and I founded a company called Careerious.  Our software helps take the risk out of hiring.  If you’re hiring, you should check it out.  (Hint: watch the demo.)  In addition to building this solution, we also thought it might make sense to start a blog to discuss hiring, with a slant on small business … since we had trouble finding any other blogs on hiring that didn’t make us want to shoot ourselves.  With that in mind, I’m going to be pretty informal (i.e. missspell stuff on purpose) so don’t hesitate to comment on our blog or make any suggestions, if we’ve forgotten anything.

Over the next few weeks, we plan to cover several topics designed to … well … help you hire online.  Here are some topics you can expect to see over the next several weeks:

-> How is hiring online different from hiring offline?

-> How do I decide what type of person will perform my job the best?

-> What’s the most effective/legal process to assess job applicants?

-> How do I “sell” my job to attract the best applicants?

-> What’s the best way to sort/screen/prioritize all my candidates?

-> What’s the best way to interview?

-> What are some great, predictive interview questions?

-> What’s the best way to check references?

So add us to your RSS feeds by clicking the icon in the upper right of this page, or by bookmarking www.HowToHireOnline.com in your browser.  We look forward to seeing you again soon!