Want to recruit and hire a superior workforce? This checklist for hiring employees will help you systematize your process for hiring employees, whether it's your first employee or one of many employees you are hiring. This hiring employees checklist helps you keep track of your recruiting efforts. This hiring employees checklist communicates both the recruiting and the hiring process and progress in recruiting to the hiring manager. You'll want to start with the first page of this checklist for hiring employees.
- Once you have developed a number of applicants for the position, screen resumes and/or applications against the prioritized qualifications and criteria established. Note that resume cover letters matter as you screen.
- Phone screen the candidates whose credentials look like a good fit with the position. Determine candidate salary requirements, if not stated with the application, as requested.
- Schedule qualified candidates, whose salary needs you can afford, for a first interview with the hiring supervisor and an HR representative, either in-person or on the phone. In all cases, tell the candidates the timeline you anticipate the interview process will take.
- Ask the candidate to fill out your official job application, upon their arrival for the interview.
- Give the candidate a copy of the job description to review.
- Hold screening interviews during which the candidate is assessed and and has the opportunity to learn about your organization and your needs.
- Fill out the Job Candidate Evaluation Form for each candidate interviewed.
- Meet to determine which (if any) candidates to invite back for a second interview.
- Determine the appropriate people to participate in the second round of interviews. This may include potential coworkers, customers, the hiring supervisor, the hiring supervisor’s manager and HR. Only include people who will impact the hiring decision.
- Schedule the additional interviews.
- Hold the second round of interviews with each interviewer clear about their role in the interview process. (Culture fit, technical qualifications, customer responsiveness and knowledge are several of the screening responsibilities you may want your interviewers to assume.)
- Candidates participate in any testing you may require for the position.
- Interviewers fill out the candidate rating form.
- Human Resources checks the finalists’ (people to whom you are considering offering the position) credentials, references and other qualifying documents and statements.
- Anyone who has stated qualifications dishonestly or who fails to pass the checks is eliminated as a candidate.
- Through the entire interviewing process, HR, and managers, where desired, stay in touch with the most qualified candidates via phone and email.
- Reach consensus on whether the organization wants to select any candidate (via informal discussion, a formal discussion meeting, HR staff touching base with interviewers, candidate rating forms, and so on). If dissension exists, the supervising manager should make the final decision.
- If no candidate is superior, start again to review your candidate pool and redevelop a pool if necessary.
- HR and the hiring supervisor agree on the offer to make to the candidate, with the concurrence of the supervisor’s manager and the departmental budget.
- Talk informally with the candidate about whether he or she is interested in the job at the offered salary and stated conditions. Make certain the candidate agrees that they will participate in a background check, a drug screen and sign a Non-compete Agreement or a Confidentiality Agreement, depending on the position. (This should have been signed off on the application.) If so, proceed with an offer letter. You can also make the job offer contingent on certain checks.
- If not, determine if negotiable factors exist that will bring the organization and the candidate into agreement. A reasonable negotiation is expected; a candidate that returns repeatedly to the company requesting more each time is not a candidate the company wants to hire.
- If the informal negotiation leads the organization to believe the candidate is viable, HR will prepare a written position offer letter from the supervisor that offers the position, states and formalizes the salary, reporting relationship, supervising relationships, and any other benefits or commitments the candidate has negotiated or the company has promised.
- The offer letter, the job description and the Company Non-Compete or Confidentiality Agreement are provided to the candidate.
- The candidate signs the offer documentation to accept the job or refuses the position.
- If yes, schedule the new employee's start date.
- If no, start again to review your candidate pool and redevelop a pool if necessary.
See the first half of the checklist.
From here, subjects for another day include New Employee Orientation and more.Have questions? Want to discuss these concepts? Have you tried out some of these recommendations? Consider visiting the Forum.
