Hiring – Process and Tools to find great talent – ITPN – EP009

You’re growing, you’re hiring, your making decisions on new team members.  If you’re like me it is one of the least favorite things you will have to do as an entrepreneur.   You post an ad, have some interviews and hire someone that you basically have known for one hour.

Then reality sets in. You basically only know a little bit about your new hire.  They may or may not be a great tech, or worse he may be a terrible fit for your culture and act like a cancer on your team.
Hiring and Finding the Best Talent
Today we’re going to talk about some great ways to improve your hiring process and get the right people in the right seats at your company.   In episode 9 of the IT provider network I am going to share with you the tools and processes I use to search for great candidates and in episode 10 we’ll talk about interviewing and testing and finally in episode 11 we will talk about some great employee onboarding tips to get your new hire settled in and feeling like part of the team.

Before I get to the content of the show I wanted to give a special shoutout to my team at PICS ITech.  We made the MSPMentor MSP 501 list for the 5th consecutive year in a row and that wouldn't have been possible without the team.

 
Job Descriptions
Finding a good hire starts with a good job description that you can tailor into a great job advertisement.   I would recommend that if you are hiring for an existing position that you analyze your existing job and see what the role, requirements, and qualifications are for that position.   Then we can roll that into a formal job description that your existing and new employees can use as a guideline for their job.

If you are starting from scratch and in the US, look at the US Department of Labor Career One Stop website.  They have an online job description creator that will give you a good editable start on your job description.    You put in a job title and a location and the tool will spit back a job description that you can edit online and save.

I use a supercharged version of a job description in our company.  We use Employee Strategic Plans or ESP’s to work with each of our employees so that all parties involved know what is expected of them and also that individual team members plans flow up to department plans, divisional plans and finally to our corporate plans.  The ESP’s include goals, responsibilities, and qualifications like a normal job description but add time allocation, career paths and expectations to the document.

 
Job Advertisements
Once you have a good job description it’s time to create a great job advertisement.  One of the sayings we have around the office is “someone’s always selling someone” and this is your first chance to sell your company and your position to the candidate.
A.I.D.A.
Before you start writing the job advertisement get your head on straight.   Unlike the job description which is written for a position the advertisement should be written for ONE person, the person you want to select your company and apply for your job.  If you think of this as any other ad you should strive to write using the AIDA method:

So what is AIDA, it is an acronym that stands for

A = Attention
I = Interest
D = Desire
A = Action

There are many articles on the AIDA method, so google it and you can do a deep dive but I will break it down quickly for you here.

A – Attention – you can’t get a good candidate if you cannot get them to click on your advertisement so you need to capture the candidate’s attention in the beginning of your ad.  This starts with the Job Title or the Posting Title.   Make sure it is written in such a way that you will get the most candidates to click on the ad and start to read.

I – Interest – This is where you need to start building interest in the position.  I like to write as if I am speaking to ONE candidate and telling them about the position.  For example statements like “You will be helping our customer do x...