As a recruiter in my past life, it’s my jam. I get nerdy for recruitment, I love teaching people about recruitment, and I could talk about recruitment all day.
One of the things that is so important in recruitment is preparation.
I can’t stress this enough.
If you just jump into posting an advert because you’re panicking that you suddenly need help, without taking the time to work through the first steps, you’re setting yourself up for a difficult recruitment process, and possibly a rocky working relationship with the person you do bring on.
“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”
What do I mean by preparing, and the first steps?
The first thing you need to do is sit down and define the role. In your head, you probably have an idea of some of the tasks you want the person to do that would free up your time. But have you really thought it all through?
This means looking at:
✨ The day to day tasks you want the role to complete, and the goals/outcomes you want them to achieve? I don’t just mean some of them, but ALLLLLL of them.
✨ How long will these things take?
✨ If there are any particular days that things need to be completed on?
✨ Do you have any particular requirements the person must meet in order to complete the tasks?
On top of the role duties, you also need to look at the legalities and logistics.
✨ Have you headed over to the FairWork website and used the “Find my Award” tool to see what industry award the person would be employed under, and what the award rates are?
✨ Will you be paying them the award rate, or above award?
✨ What other non-monetary remuneration and benefits will you be providing?
✨ Have you spoken to a lawyer or an HR professional to put together a contract template in line with your award and policies?
✨ Do you have policies in place to manage a team?
✨ Do you know how to pay them - do you have a Payroll person, or an accountant who will manage this for you?
Once you have all the above worked out, you can then START to look at commencing your process. The last thing you need to do is plan out your time. There’s no point advertising tomorrow if you can’t review applications until next month, and then not interview for a month after that. Once you start your process, you need to be ready to complete the next steps and start contacting candidates almost immediately - at the moment, it’s a really competitive market for employers to attract and retain quality talent. As an employer, you need to provide a prompt response and a really positive recruitment experience that leaves candidates feeling really positive about working with you, or at least not going off and talking negatively about your business and impacting your business reputation.
So with that in mind, have you planned out what your recruitment process will look like?
✨ Do you have your formal position description that you are assessing candidates against?
✨ Will you be comparing them in a matrix, or some other method?
✨ Will you be conducting phone screens, or going straight to a face to face interview? If you are phone screening, have you prepared a phone screen template?
✨ Have you prepared an interview guide ready to interview?
✨ Have you prepared a reference check form ready to reference check at the end?
✨ Is your contract template finalised?
✨ Do you know what paperwork a new starter needs to complete to be able to start with you and start getting paid?
✨ Have you diarised (or some other system) when you will complete each step of the process, so as to make sure you stay on top of the process and don’t lose out on candidates?
I don’t want to scare you off, but I do want you to be aware of everything that goes into a recruitment process before you even start, so that you can properly prepare and be in the absolute best position to start hiring your dream team!
I'm always happy to be a sounding board and share any knowledge I have, so feel free to reach out to me in my inbox at info@careerpursuit.com.au if you have any questions or comments on how best to prepare for your new team!
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