Top 10 Hiring Tips in a Candidate’s Market

Marcianne Kuethen

January 22, 2018

In looking back through our blog posts chock full of valuable information, we’ve pulled together Amtec’s top 10 hiring tips in a candidate’s market. They contain the latest recruiting trends and new ideas as well as tried-and-true methods for hiring the best candidates available. Maybe your hiring this past year hasn’t gone the way you’d hoped, or you just want a refresher on how to find top talent. Either way, here are our top 10 hiring tips to help you manage your staffing in 2018, along with links to articles that expand on each one.

1. Compensate your best employees well so you don’t have to replace them.

We speak with employees every day who are looking for something better…it could be a shorter commute, a better environment, more growth opportunities, or a higher salary. If you’re facing the employee compensation dilemma, remember that employees who feel valued tend to be loyal. Losing good employees is costly, so keep abreast of what’s important to your employees to help retain your best professionals.

2. Establish a solid hiring process.

Your hiring process can be the biggest determiner in whether you find good employees or so-so people who end up fizzling out. Not only does a great recruitment process help you land the best professionals, but it also protects you legally.  It’s well worth the effort it takes to develop a best-in-class hiring process.

3. Start off every candidate search by writing a position profile.

Of the top 10 hiring tips in a candidate’s market, starting off by writing a position profile is fundamental. The position profile informs how you write your job description and job ad or posting, where you go to source candidates, how you conduct interviews, and how you onboard your new professional.

4. Be prepared to pay market wage to attract better candidates.

Great employees don’t work for mediocre wages. It’s painful, but we regularly witness employers losing out on great candidates because another employer made a better offer. Workers know they’re a hot commodity, and they’re receiving multiple offers at once.

5. Be willing to consider candidates with transferable skills and experience.

Don’t limit your candidate pool to only those who have specific experience in your exact role or industry, or you may lose out on some of the best available professionals. Identical experience may not be as important as a candidate’s thinking skills and comparable performance. While you may need to invest in extra training for your new hire to bring him or her to the point of productivity, this approach may also be the only way to find candidates for hard-to-fill positions.

6. Hire with both skills and company culture in mind.

We tend to want to hire those with whom we instantly feel comfortable, but going with your gut could be a mistake if you fail to make sure they’re truly qualified (see behavioral interviewing below). Yet you should pay attention to your intuition in order to hire candidates who are a good fit for your company culture. More mishires happen, not because a person wasn’t qualified, but because he or she needed a different managerial style or overall culture in which to thrive.

7. Use behavioral interviewing questions in your interviews.

Asking closed-ended or hypothetical questions that suggest the answers will not help you to get to know candidates. Using behavioral interview questions allows you to get to learn about a person’s past performance, which is the best predictor of future behavior.

8. Be prepared to negotiate salary and benefits.

It’s called a candidate’s market because candidates are in the driver’s seat. Qualified professionals are in such demand that when you’re ready to hire, your offer may be one of several. We’ve seen a lot of employers lose candidates at the final offer stage because they weren’t willing to up the ante by offering a better salary, benefit, or perk.

9. Use an onboarding tool to ensure your new employee’s success, productivity, and loyalty.

Nothing’s worse than not hitting the mark because there was no mark to hit! Set up your new employee to succeed by giving them 30-, 60-, and 90-day goals for what you expect from them. (This is where having written a position profile comes in handy. You can use it to create a success map that spells out exactly what you need and want from your new professional.) Using an onboarding tool is the best way to get your employee engaged and productive right from the start.

10. If hiring isn’t your thing, hire an expert at hiring.

You’re the expert at what you do, but hiring may not be your favorite other job! However, it is our favorite thing! That’s why we’ve shared these top 10 hiring tips in a candidate’s market. Amtec has been in the recruiting business since 1959, and we are passionate about our mission: Helping companies build high- performing teams and helping people find meaningful work.