​The hiring process can be fraught, frustrating and time-consuming but it doesn’t have to be like that. Experience has taught us that there are three secret ingredients to sourcing candidates that make all the difference. Not only do they make recruitment easier and more rewarding, they give employers a far better chance of finding someone who will stay.

Curiosity

Of all the key stages in the recruitment process, the one that has the biggest bearing on a successful outcome is our initial briefing call with our client. This is, effectively, where the job specification takes on a life of its own. For this to happen, we have to be curious, asking as many questions as we feel necessary to drill down into the skills, qualities and experience the client is looking for.

How will this person make a difference to the team? What are the must-haves and what would be ideal? We listen, ask, repeat and confirm. If we still have questions, we ask them until we have a complete picture of their ideal hire.

The danger at this stage is to accept a drafted job description and base the hiring process on it. Unless it has been fully fleshed out to create a three-dimensional image of the perfect candidate, it is always going to be open to interpretation and doomed to failure.  

Nuance 

Every job comes with a list of essential skills but those skills will be used slightly differently in every role. A good recruiter will know their sector well enough to understand how training and experience will be applied in the client’s business and therefore which bits of a candidate’s CV need to be examined and questioned most closely.  

Far from being a tick-box exercise, matching skills to a job description is something of an art form. If this sounds a little over the top, think back to those bad hires of the past. Many of them could probably have been avoided with a little more attention to detail in the initial matching stage. Yes, that candidate has all the right skills but do they have enough experience in the ones that really matter to this client’s business?

When a recruiter understands the importance of nuance, job adverts instantly become more interesting to read and give a good insight into the nature of the role on offer.

Engagement

So, your hard work has paid off and you have a promising candidate or two in the frame. The focus now shifts towards engaging them with the employer value proposition. In other words, you want them to see why this company is the one they really want to work for.

Most employers understand that they need to make themselves appealing to prospective talent if they are to hire successfully. We talk about how they can do this in our article 5 Unexpected ways HVAC companies are making themselves more attractive to candidates. A recruiter’s job is to reveal, repeat and reinforce these attributes throughout the hiring process so that the candidate is enthused by the prospect of working there and is therefore less likely to lose interest or go elsewhere.

As you can see, hiring is a craft and when approached in this way, it is a thrilling and rewarding process that can bring together some of the best candidates in the market with the most desirable companies to work for.

Do you need support to find the best people for your HVAC business? We can help. Call Thornhvac on 0115 871 4777. Read some of our feedback from satisfied clients.

You may also be interested in our article Why good strategic hiring is a marathon rather than a sprint