Tess Taylor 
A competent workforce is essential to the success of any business. As a human resources professional, the responsibility of finding the best and the brightest falls mostly on you. However, stress, a cumbersome hiring process, and other common factors may lead you to turn away promising job candidates unwittingly. Recruiting new hires is never easy, no matter your years of experience. Knowing what to avoid, however, can make the experience a fruitful venture for both you and the applicants.
Finding the Right Person for the Job
The goal of an HR professional is to find someone who’s right for the assignment, but the right candidate isn’t always set in stone. Perhaps your idea of the ideal job candidate is a thirty-something individual with at least five years of related work experience, a degree from a top-twenty university, and no gaps in employment. This specific set of requirements isn’t unusual, but it can be limiting.
Many HR personnel automatically dismiss candidates who fail to meet their objectives on paper; it seems risky to bet on a fresh-faced graduate when applicants with perfect resumes and backgrounds are in large supply, but if you’ve tossed applications that show a stretch of unemployment or minimal work experience, you may be missing out on the future stars of your company. In many cases, job candidates without picture-perfect credentials have valid reasons for being unemployed and make up for their inexperience with a healthy dose of enthusiasm, wit, and adaptability.
Avoid Turning Away Great Candidates
For job candidates, the hiring process is to be feared. Long, arduous, and exhausting, it’s not much better on the other side of the spectrum. Oftentimes, people in human-resources departments are tempted to prolong the process. They may engage in complicated hiring practices in the hopes that someone better will come along or simply because they don’t know any better. Either way, the most qualified candidates are likely to have plenty of other prospects and even fewer reasons to abide a windy series of interviews or unsatisfying offers.
The hiring process helps you gauge potential employees and lets job candidates determine whether your company is the right fit for their needs. Unprofessional interview questions, long response times, and inflexibility can deter candidates looking for the opposite of what you’re showing them.
Creating Outstanding Job Advertisements
Your job posting can spell the difference between great and average job candidates; it’s the first step to getting noticed by prospective employees. If you want to recruit from the middle of the pack, a generic description will suffice, but if you want to improve the quality of your pool of applicants, you’ll need to create a posting that sets your company apart from other employers. Highly qualified candidates often want to feel excited by their jobs. Postings that lack personality and unique details won’t inspire positive feelings or great interest. In the long run, paying minimal attention to your posting will put some of the brightest talents beyond your grasp.
Recruiting a new employee may not be simple, but it can worthwhile when you find someone who’s perfect for the job. A few common HR missteps, however, can result in a less than desirable outcome. Eliminate unreasonable expectations and revamp your job posting and hiring process. This little bit of effort won’t go unnoticed by job candidates who are also looking for the best.
AUTHOR BIO: Nancy Anderson is the communities and article Editor for Beyond.com. Nancy has 10 years’ experience in the online job search business with Beyond. Nancy’s team produces dozens of articles every month for top internet sites. Follow Nancy and the Beyond team on https://twitter.com/BeyondJobs.
