Attracting and hiring better candidates has a bigger impact on your business than you might think. As a business owner or manager, you know better than anyone that recruitment can be a high-stakes, high-risk game. Not only are there potential hits to your bottom line, there can be other setbacks, including:
• Lost productivity; longer learning curves
• Poor customer service
• Increased company liability, depending on the person and his or her background
• Higher employee turnover
• Morale issues with your other employees

How can you help reduce these negative impacts to your business?
• Identify, locate and recruit the right candidate the first time
• Determine the appropriate level of compensation and benefits needed to attract and retain the right people
• Create an atmosphere conducive to retaining your best employees

Recruiting process best practices
To improve the effectiveness of your recruiting efforts, you should plan up-front to save valuable time and potential costly mistakes later.

Job description development
How can you tell if you are hiring the right person if you haven’t identified specifically what that person will be doing? How will a potential candidate know if they want to come to work for you if they don’t know exactly what their responsibilities are? Don’t assume that an “Office Manager” or another title means the same thing to everyone. Having job descriptions prepared and maintained for every position in the organization is one of the most important steps in ensuring effective hiring practices and providing equal employment opportunity to all qualified individuals.

New hire salary information
There are several factors you should consider when determining salaries in a compensation plan.
• Job analysis: First, every compensation program starts with a job analysis, which entails observing the tasks performed by the employee, then writing the primary responsibilities of the position into a job description. The job analysis and resulting job description provide information on the necessary knowledge, skills and competencies needed to perform the job. In addition, the job description can be used to determine what are essential job functions under an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) reasonable accommodation analysis.

• Job evaluation: It’s important to conduct a job evaluation, which involves reviewing job descriptions, formulating job titles and developing a scale to measure the differences between each job position. The most popular method of job evaluation is the factor comparison method, which depicts a pay rate based on several factors related to the job.

• Market salary rates: One of the most common mistakes that are made in the hiring process is compensation. Compensation consists of more than just salary. It includes benefits and any perks of the position and/or business. There are tools available to help you determine the proper compensation for each position in your business, specific to your geographic area. If you are working with a full-service HR outsourcing company you can obtain access to online tools that will show you the average rates for each position and take into consideration the level of experience of the candidate and your geographic area. This helps ensure that your business doesn’t pay too much, but does pay enough, to attract the right employees.

Interview guidelines and assistance
In today’s litigious world, it is critical that anyone who interviews potential candidates understand the types of questions that can be asked by law. Otherwise, a seemingly harmless question could lead to accusations of discrimination. A well thought-out interview guide will also maximize your time and ensure that you gather the information you need in a timely and efficient manner to make the right decision.

Recruitment advertising development
Don’t assume that the newspaper or Internet are the only places to recruit the right people. Have you considered offering your current employees a referral bonus for referring a great candidate to fill your position? If this approach doesn’t work for your business, recruitment advertising can be a great tool to collect resumes. The more specific you are about what you are looking for, the better the response will be. Remember, “better” doesn’t mean more resumes, it means more qualified candidates. Let’s face it, who has time to fumble through hundreds of resumes? It is far better to get fewer resumes from qualified applicants, if possible.

Candidate assessment
Resume screening, background screening, pre-employment assessment and drug screening are tools to help ensure that your company hires the right person the first time. Again, if you are using an HR outsourcing company, these services are provided to your business, freeing you up to focus on seeing patients.

If you have ten or more employees in your business, you can benefit from HR outsourcing. If you want to learn how Gevity can help with your recruiting efforts and other HR issues, please visit Gevity.com.

ABOUT GEVITY:
Thousands of small and mid-sized businesses nationwide leverage the flexibility and scalability of Gevity’s Human Resources (HR) solution to help them maximize the return on investment in their people. Essentially, Gevity serves as the full-service HR department for these businesses, providing each employee with support previously only available at much larger companies. Gevity delivers the Gevity Edge™, a comprehensive solution comprised of innovative management and administration services, helping employers to streamline HR administration, optimize HR practices, and maximize people and performance. This solution enables both businesses and their employees to achieve their full potential, giving them an edge over competitors. Gevity’s unique approach features Gevity OnSite™, experienced HR Consultants based in local markets backed by nationwide resources and easy-to-use technology, including Gevity OnLine™ and Gevity OnCall™. For more information, visit http://www.gevity.com.