Part 1 of 3: Questions to Ask to Hire the Right People

In this three part blog entry, we will show you the top nine questions to ask when trying to hire the right people.

With recruiting becoming harder and harder, and quality candidates becoming more and more scarce, it is important to ask the right questions to find your client the best in the business. The decision to hire is an investment a company takes very seriously, and if you stick to these questions, as well as your gut feeling and recruiting skill of building relationships and maintaining contact, you will find your candidates being the ones getting hired and staying with the company they were placed at. This keeps your client, and your wallet, happier than ever.

1. What types of jobs are we hiring for?

         There are many different types of jobs that recruiters hire for. Filling  a financial analyst position and filling a position for a law firm are two very different jobs, and they need to be recruited for differently. In our case, we are always filling technology jobs. Even if your company specializes in a certain industry, there are still countless amounts of different jobs within that industry. You need to understand that hiring for a CIO position and a entry level developer need to be gone about completely differently. The CIO position should be recruited for aggressively, and many current or potential CIO's would want the idea of them leaving their current company completely confidential; whereas the entry level position can be recruited for more openly, because the candidate will probably be right out of college, or coming from a company without available positions that this candidate can advance to. Examples like this are important to keep in mind, especially when looking at positions with small but important differences.

2. How many people does the company need, and when do they need them?

        It is not good to show a company candidates weeks apart when they need them for a project two weeks from now. The company is likely looking to nail down candidates as soon as possible for this upcoming project that the upper management is probably putting pressure on them for. On the other spectrum, it is not good to show a company 5 candidates in a week when they are looking to start a project two months from now. Chances are they will forget they even interviewed your candidates, and move on to new candidates, so you did work and received no results or money. Also, always keep in mind how many people you think the company will need. If they are being unrealistic and trying to hire 5 people for a 10 person project, they will likely ask you for 5 more candidates later on. Plan for that, and have these candidates in your back pocket when they ask you for them.

3. What sort of people do we need to hire?

       This is all about knowing your client companies needs. If they are looking for someone to sit behind a computer for a project and pump out code every day, you can pretty much hire anyone who has the necessary skills. If they are looking for a project manager, it is probably going to be someone with the necessary skills and someone who has stellar people skills and can communicate with a team. Find the right person for the job. This means you have to rely on your old fashioned recruiting skills and get to know your candidates on a personal level.

Look for part two of this blog post next week...