Our Top 10 Tips on How to Recruit Staff

At some point, when your business is beginning to catch fire and become successful, you’re going to want to hire more staff. This can be a daunting prospect for new entrepreneurs and getting the right people on site can be a difficult undertaking. We recognise that taking on a Virtual Assistant for a full-time 40 hour week often won’t make financial sense, so let’s draw on some of our lessons from growing the Head Office team here at Virtalent instead!

Here are our tips on how to recruit staff and get the people you want and need right now.

Be clear about the role

Drill down deep into what you want your new employee to be charged with. You’re going to have to put together a job description and, if you want to attract the right people, you need to be crystal clear about what they are going to do.

What qualifications do they need? Most businesses look for someone with a certain level of skill and evidently this varies depending on the post. Do you want someone with a degree qualification in any area or someone with a specific knowledge base? Or do you want someone you can train yourself?

What qualities do they need? More important than formal qualifications are the personal qualities and previous experience that your new employee will bring to the table. This is a little more difficult to gauge than reading about their degree programme so requires a great deal of thought.

How are you going to employ them? You may want someone full-time or you might just need them part-time for the moment. With many businesses now working with outsourced services, it’s not necessary to have someone sat in the office and you can hire someone on a more flexible basis. This is something to seriously consider if you are on a smaller budget.

Put together a job description

This needs to be as clear and concise as possible so that you attract the right sort of person, particularly if you are employing someone in a critical position to help you move your business onto the next stage (e.g. a Marketing role).

What are you going to pay? It’s a good idea to do your research once you have put together your job description. You may have a limited budget to work with but if you are not going to pay at least the industry standard for the role then you are going to have difficulty attracting the best candidates or they may leave shortly after you hire them.

Advertising the post

There are a number of options here including advertising in local news outlets or online with particular job sites. You also have the option of going through a recruitment agency who will be able to make sure that you have all the right components in place.

Selection and interview

You may be surprised at the number of applications you get for each job you advertise. That means going through each one and choosing the ones you want to interview. You will need to have a coherent interview strategy in place that gives all candidates an even chance. You don’t want to interview too many people either, especially applicants who are ultimately not going to make the grade, so making sure your initial application process is as comprehensive as possible helps.

Choosing your employee

Do give yourself a cooling-off period before you make any formal job offers. This gives you the time to look at everything in the cold light of day. For most business owners, the right person is going to be a mix of qualifications and personal qualities, as well as someone they can work with on a day to day basis, so you need some to digest everything you have heard from them.