Running a successful business is all about recruiting the right people.

Your employees are the people who drive innovation, ensure customer satisfaction, and serve your industry. The costs of a bad hire are significant in terms of the money you waste on recruitment and onboarding. However, the repercussions don't stop there. Bringing the wrong person into your team can have an impact on workplace productivity too, by disrupting your company culture.

Once your specialist recruitment agency or in house recruitment team has delivered a selection of skilled professionals to your door, it's up to your hiring manager to get to know each applicant, before choosing the one that best fits.

The question is, how can you equip your hiring expert with the tools they need to make the right choice for your organisation?

1. Encourage Plenty of Research

Businesses expect their candidates to come to interviews prepared, and brimming with information about the role at hand. However, if your hiring manager hasn't done enough research to understand what they're looking for in a recruit, then it's impossible to make an informed decision.

A hiring manager's research begins with the job description, where they'll list the key skills and abilities required for the role in question. From there, they can also be thinking about the answers to the following questions:

• Which soft skills will work well in this role, and fit with company culture?
• Why does this position exist, and why is it essential to fill it?
• Who will be responsible for this new hire, and what kind of person would work well with them?
• Which talents are "essential", and which can be trained at a later stage?

2. Create a Standardised Process

Hiring managers don't always get a lot of opportunities to "practice" their interviewing techniques. Without a solid strategy in place, it's easy to get distracted by things like personal preference, or an increasing urgency to fill a gap in the company.

Your hiring manager can simplify the process of finding the right recruit, by working with a specialist agency to design a checklist for scoring and evaluating each possible employee. On the other hand, you can always give your hiring manager a list of questions to ask, and features to look for based on the essential elements of the job description.

For instance, if you're searching for a Linux expert, your onboarding expert might ask how many years of experience they have with the program, and what accomplishments they have achieved in previous roles.

3. Invest in Some Interview Training

Perhaps the easiest way to make sure that a hiring manager is prepared to make the most out of the interviewing experience is to invest in some specialist interview training. Specialist recruitment agencies and hiring experts spend years cultivating their skills, so it's easy to see why some professionals don't instantly get the hang of evaluating job applicants.

After some training sessions, you can encourage your hiring manager to write out a list of questions for the candidates you want to consider, and practice going through them in advance. Though the details of an interview might change according to the position in question, the main answers any hiring manager needs to get from an applicant include:

• How can you fit in with the company culture?
• How passionate are you about the role?
• How well can you do the job?

4. Make Every Question Count

An interview isn't just about finding the right staff member for your team. In today's competitive marketplace, it's also about selling your company and the opportunities it can offer to everyone who shows an interest in your available position.

With that in mind, every question your hiring manager asks must be tailored to both showcase your value, and unlock useful information about the individual they're talking to. For instance, instead of saying "So, tell me more about yourself", the first question in an interview might be: "You know we're one of the most innovative DevOps companies in the marketplace. From what you know about this role, tell us how you'd be a good investment."

5. Inspire Active Listening

Finally, make sure that your hiring manager goes into each conversation with the resources they need to actively take notes and absorb information about a candidate. While a template of pre-set questions can give hiring experts the guidance, they need to move through the interview experience, provide them with the freedom to respond to answers to their own pre-agreed questions too.

Remember, it's a good idea to finish each interview on a positive note too, as this can leave your potential hire feeling confident, respected, and excited to hear from you. The last thing you want is to choose the right employee, then lose them to a competing company.

About Inspire People

We believe that technology has the power to change the world for the better and we love working with businesses whose technology or purpose has a positive impact. We help businesses that share our vision access the people, resources and strategic advice they need to achieve their digital transformation goals.

Our service is designed to accelerate your digital growth. We created our offer in response to emerging challenges in an uncertain business landscape: a blend of Advisory, Talent and Project led services that will help you achieve your strategic aims and deliver more for your employees and customers. We’ll connect you to rare specialist talent, experts and insight to help you navigate your biggest challenges and remain competitive in a changed world.

Get in touch today to discover how working with us could help you innovate and grow.

Speak to our expert team on +44(0)20 7871 8550 or email  hello@inspirepeople.net