Hiring employees who exhibit the drive, understanding and skill required to grow your business is key. It determines the direction your business takes and the quality of the product that comes out of it.
The role of hiring such talent falls with Human Resources. Your HR manager must have a keen understanding of your business and the kind of employees it needs, apart from understanding the technicalities as well. These are requisite to ensuring that you're hiring employees who would be a valuable addition to your team.
However, to achieve this, business owners must identify the right candidate to fill a Human Resources position, which in turn, raises an interesting question: While the HR does the hiring, how do you hire for HR? What checklist should you follow when hiring an HR professional. And more importantly, when is the right time to do so?
When Should You Hire an HR Professional?
A lot of organizations tend to delay onboarding a professional to look after their HR policies and procedures. Startups, in particular, primarily focus on achieving their business and sales objectives while putting off hiring someone to manage their employees.
Such a trend, however, can prove to be severely counterproductive, especially when organizations are constantly hiring new talent. With an increasing number of employees, the need to manage cultural and legal issues also rises.
The odds are that newer organizations might not have the resources to hire a full-time HR professional, and that is understandable. This situation calls for an HR consultant who can come in when needed but bring with them valuable insights and techniques to hire the right talent.
How Do You Hire the Ideal Human Resources Professional?
Outline a Specific Job Description
While it's essential that you screen candidates to hire the right one, it's equally important that you attract the right kind in the first place. The best way to do this is to specifically outline the job description of the position you're looking to fill.
List every single role they will be required to take up, while also telling them about the workplace culture. Briefing candidates on the kind of work environment they'd have to manage will ensure that they know what they're signing up for.
Prepare Specific Questions for the Interview
An interview is the best way to gauge whether or not a particular individual is the right fit. As such, your questions must be tailored to see how an interviewee would respond to a given situation, more so, with respect to your organization.
Ask questions that bring out their responses to situations like terminating an existing employee, or responding to an escalation, or handling a delicate or sensitive encounter at work. This will help you pick the ideal candidate for managing Human Resources at your organization.
Ensure That There's No Room for Bias
Where there are people, turns out there is bound to be a degree of bias. The Open University found that at least 30% of senior managers hire people that are just like them.
Although this is often the result of inherent or even unconscious bias, you need to spot these tendencies during the interview. Any issues surrounding discrimination in the future can be deeply damaging to the company's image.
Being Tech-Savvy Matters
Lastly, ask your candidates what tools they would use for hiring employees for your organization. The ideal candidate should be able to adequately justify the use of one system over another. And needless to say, they must know their way around the relevant technological tools.
With a carefully crafted hiring process and HR training, you can ensure that your organization's affairs will be well taken care of.