Taking on your first employee can be a big event for a small business. Usually business owners cover off the essentials pretty well (standard terms & conditions, disciplinary policy and process, sickness absence policy, right to work etc). However what tends to get missed are all the other essentials that will help you select the RIGHT person for your business.

A realistic job description.

What’s a REALISTIC Job description? I hear you say – find out more here.

Pre-defined, selection criteria

Which elements or the job description and person specification are a must have? Try to differentiate in advance what ‘good’, and ‘poor’ looks like for you BEFORE you interview.  Do this by setting some clear behavioural criteria. E.g. if you need someone who is prepared to be flexible and adapts easily  then a ‘good candidate will show you where they have changed their approach or style given changing circumstances, whereas a ‘poor’ candidate will have stuck rigidly to the same approach even when it appears ineffective.

A clearly mapped out recruitment process

This is important so that everyone knows who is doing what, why, when and how. The easiest way to lose a great candidate is a slow and vague process. Who is going to make the final decision? When are you going to let candidates know the outcome? Who are going to ask the questions? and take notes? A muddled process also doesn’t create a great first impression for your candidates.

Trained interviewers

This is to ensure fairness and consistency in the selection process. It’s also important as you need to know how to extract the right information from candidates. Candidates can go off at tangents and can be adept at creating a great impression but with little substance when you analyse what they actually say. There are lots of interview traps – and they are very easy to fall into without the right training.

The right package

A good employee proposition is not just about salary, think about other benefits that may be relevant for the type of person you need for the role. It may be flexibility, training, a clear career path or the authority to make decisions.

A great induction plan.

It’s no good getting the right employee in and carrying out a polished selection process only to let the whole thing down with an anticlimax of a first day filled with vagueness and uncertainty. The good news is, it’s very easy to prevent this from happening.