In April and May Co- was recruiting. We share 5 tips we learnt in our recruitment process:

1. Short phone interviews.  

After receiving over 200 applications we narrowed the field to a shortlist of 16 and set up calls lasting 10 - 15 mins with each one to see which ones we wanted to meet for a full interview.

As we all know CVs can be misleading and it can be clear very early in an interview that a candidate is not the right person.

These 10 minute calls were incredibly useful and a huge amount of time was saved on both sides.

2. Test days.  

We got this idea from a client, who gets all candidates to come in and work for day, paying them a modest amount for the days work.

Statistically research shows that interviews are a very ineffective way to assess whether someone is good at doing the job (though very good at telling you whether you will get on with someone).

We found the test days excellent at finding out who had the skills and attitudes required to do the job.

3.  The future is more important than the past.  

Many job interviews are about what someone has done, but we felt that finding out what our candidates wanted in life and where they were headed led to conversations that provided much better clarity on who the best candidates were.

It also made the process much more enjoyable, transforming it from a game of cat and mouse, where each side tries to find each other out, into an open conversation of whether marriage of job and person would work for both sides.

4.  Offer up your glass chin.  

This phrase may be familiar to those who came to Marcus Cauchi's seminar on sales. For those who aren't, the idea is to offer up all the possible reasons why a transaction should not go ahead right at the start, essentially to save time.

Far better that the potential candidate finds out all the bad bits of the job now, rather than a month into the job and exits as fast as they can.

5.  Set aside time. 

We learnt that the process takes longer than you think...especially if you are doing it for the first time. Apart from the obvious elements like having CVs to read, there are employment documents to prepare, systems to upgrade, references to follow up, policies to establish.

Finally we would like to thank Susie Becker of HR Lunar Consulting who was a fantastic sounding board and consultant through the process.