1. Create a voice mail account with either a local number or an 800 number. You can use Google Voice (free) or go to www.onebox.com for a monthly subscription (around $15/month). In the greeting on the voice mail box, introduce your business and the position, then ask three questions such as these: "Tell us about your past experience", "Why do you think you're right for this job?" and "Give us a few of your strengths and weaknesses". Remember, especially if this person will be in contact with your customers, they need to be a decent speaker. If they can't speak well on the phone, they won't be able to speak well in person either.
2. Direct your advertising to this voice mail box. Craigslist.org is one of the best places employers are finding employees right now. It's also free in most market places. To get best results, post your ad or ads every 2 days at least. Do not include an email address or phone number to your business. Direct them to your voice mail number. Also, don't list your business name. You'd be amazed at how many people will not follow your instructions and will just call you or email you their resume.
3. Check the voice mails when convenient for you. Those who sound like good candidates, take their contact info down. Those who don't sound interesting... delete (compare this to having to get an email and read through a resume. Takes a minimum of several minutes. You'll see that many times you can figure out that you're not interested in some candidates within the first minute. Time saved).
4. Instead of inviting those who are interesting to individual interviews, set a date, time, and location for a group interview. That's right. Get all the interesting sounding candidates to gather together in one room. Put together a list of 5-10 questions (the bigger the group the less questions you'll get through) and go around the group listening to their answers and taking notes. If you can bring along a trusted employee, colleague, or Business Coach, it helps to collaborate and evaluate them. This will take around 90 minutes. If you have 15 candidates, you just spent 90 minutes interviewing them! Usually that would take 10-15 hours!
5. Invite those who stood out in the group interview to do a 30 minute individual interview. Be sure to ask tough questions! You don't want to be overly polite when you only have a couple hours with a person who you may have to live with for 8 or so hours a day for the next several years. Ask the tough questions now so you don't wish you'd asked them later.
6. Take the best 2 candidates for a "Test Drive". Invite them into your office for a half day or a day and tell them to work just how they would work if you hired them. This works differently for all types of positions and is totally impossible for some that require immense amounts of training, but for those that it works for it is very telling of who that person really is and what they know/don't know.
7. Make your offer to the best candidate ONLY if there is a candidate that really stood out to you. Hiring someone is far too important to chose someone just because there was nobody better available. If you need to, start the process all over. It was cost far less time, money, effort, and mental energy than if you hire the wrong person the first time.
And if you'd like more help on the details of each of these steps, just call or email me. I'd be happy to help you find a GREAT employee. 651-705-6625 jonomalley@jccompanies.net
