To Find the Best Candidates, Know What You're Looking For

Whether you are looking for a car, a job, a mate or the perfect employee for an open position you need to fill, the best advice you can follow is to decide at the outset exactly what you are looking for. Yes, you already have a laundry list of required skills, experience, and education but if you spend a little extra time in defining what you really want, you will find candidates who are a better match and save yourself time meeting with prospective candidates who aren’t quite the right fit.

To start:

• Define your company. Not what you do or sell, but your company’s personality. Do you value team-building, encourage employees to participate in after work company activities, want to create a collaborative atmosphere? Then make sure you say that in your job description. While that type of environment is not optimum for everyone, others will thrive in it and become a real asset to your company, not just fill the job.
• Define your employees. The best chance you have for selecting a successful candidate is to take a look at your company’s superstars. These will be different at every company. Are they the employees who bring in the most money, effectively manage others, motivate and develop the people who work for them? When you have a better grasp of what traits your company values, you will be able to look for and evaluate that in potential candidates.
• Talk to the people who the new employee will work for. In most companies, a department sends a written request for a new hire to HR. Often, these are just old job descriptions that will “do the job” of explaining the required skills. If you are in HR, take 10 minutes to talk to the people who will interview or manage the new employee. You will, no doubt, find out additional requirements and preferences that will help you select the right candidates to bring in for an interview.
• Create a meaningful job description. Every company wants to find a candidate with “great communication skills, dynamic leadership ability, and the ability to work easily with others while still being a self-starter who doesn’t need a lot of supervision.” When you write the job description, give a list of the actual activities that the employee will work on. That will make it much easier to find a good match.

Spending time on the above activities will give you a much clearer picture of the person you want to hire. Rather than a list of key words, you will have a good outline of the traits that will make a qualified candidate the best candidate for your unique company. And that’s where Jobvertise comes in! Once you know who you’re looking for, you can search our database of over 1 million resumes. With the world’s largest free resume database, you are sure to find exactly the person you a looking for. Contact us today. We can help you find the best candidate for the job you need to fill.