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A thoughtful, thorough hiring process can ensure you recruit and hire top talent to help grow your business.
The employee hiring and recruitment process can be lengthy and detailed. If you do it right, you’ll find and hire high-quality candidates who stick around and represent your business professionally and competently. However, many small business owners lack HR experience and aren’t sure how to create and execute a high-level hiring process. Fortunately, hiring employees and enjoying excellent outcomes requires straightforward preparation and steps. We’ll explain what small business owners must do to grow their workforce and strengthen their teams with successful hiring.
Whether you’re hiring your first or thousandth employee, preparing your business for their arrival is one of the best ways to improve the hiring and recruitment process. Follow these steps to prepare your business for new employees:
Rich Deosingh suggests researching the local market, including employee salary ranges and competitors’ activities, before considering open roles within your company.
“Research who is hiring, what the economic landscape is in your region and review other job postings,” Deosingh, district president for staffing firm Robert Half in New York, advised. “It will give you an idea of things like salary and competition in the market — who else is looking for someone with these particular skill sets?”
Once you understand the current hiring market and conditions, you can tailor the rest of your hiring process to match the competition or adjust it to stand out and grab job candidates’ attention.
Bringing on new employees requires a plethora of HR and payroll paperwork, including the following:
Fortunately, tech tools can organize new hire paperwork and streamline its completion. Many companies use a human resources information system (HRIS) or HR software to organize all this data in a single location.
“Use an HRIS like Gusto, ADP or Paycom that provides the HR back-end paperwork to the employee in a self-service mode,” recommended Laura Handrick, HR professional at Choosing Therapy. “There’s no reason a human should be shuffling paper these days. Online systems with e-signatures streamline the paperwork for you, ensuring data is captured accurately, and saving everyone (including the new hire) time.”
No matter how you gather and store hiring and onboarding paperwork, the key is having it ready before you start the hiring process.
“All of these items should be prepared beforehand and easily accessible online,” Deosingh advised. “Communication before the first day is key — if you need the new hire to provide paperwork or identification, it should be noted ahead of time.”
Matthew Dailly, managing director of Tiger Financial, recommends using past paperwork to update future requirements. “Using previous hires as a template, look over all the information gathered from them, and then update or add more important documents that have been implemented since,” Dailly suggested.
Not every small business has an internal HR department or staff member familiar with HR processes — and that’s OK. Outsourcing HR functions like recruiting, benefits administration, payroll and more can be a cost-effective solution that improves the hiring process.
“For businesses that have an HR department of one, utilizing outsourced resources for recruiting, payroll, benefits administration, etc., can be very helpful to handle the heavy lifting of compliance and reporting requirements for new employees, as well as the current employee base of the company,” noted Karen L. Roberts, SHRM-SCP and director of human resources at Flaster Greenberg PC.
The best HR outsourcing companies can ensure HR compliance while handling crucial hiring functions that can strengthen and grow your business. “Don’t delegate hiring to an untrained supervisor,” Handrick warned. “Interviewing and being able to discern talent is a skill.”
With your organization prepared to welcome new team members, follow these steps for an effective hiring process and successful onboarding. Over time, as you gain experience, you can tweak your hiring process to better suit your needs.
Sonya Schwartz, founder of Her Norm, says carefully evaluating the jobs you need to fill is crucial to prevent position redundancy in the company.
“The best thing you can do is approach the process with the mindset of filling needs, not desks,” Deosingh advised. “You are looking for the best person to fill a specific need, not just getting someone in and calling it a day.”
When it comes to recruiting, businesses have several options. For example, you can turn to recruiting firms. However, Dailly said if you decide not to go this route, state “no agencies, please” on all job recruitment forms. “This will save a ton of incoming sales calls,” he noted.
Businesses can also focus on internal hires or have current employees tap into their networks.
However you decide to approach recruiting, it’s critical to remember that you’re hiring the right candidate for a specific job — not necessarily choosing the best candidate overall.
“Recruiters and hiring managers should take their time to find the best candidate for the role and not settle for the best candidate in the applicant pool,” warned Lori Rassas, HR consultant, executive coach and author of The Perpetual Paycheck. “If you interview 10 candidates and none are a fit to their role, there will likely be pressure to just pick the best candidate. Hiring managers should resist this pressure and go back to the hiring pool to secure other candidates.”
Before posting a job or listing it internally, confer with your team managers about the ideal candidate to understand precisely what you need. Write a job description that matches what you’re seeking, including details like job requirements, responsibilities and expectations. Include information regarding your core values and company culture so you can find the right cultural fit.
Additionally, predetermine the salary you’ll offer and include it in the job description. This will help you avoid recruiting underqualified and overqualified candidates.
“In some situations, hiring managers are less than upfront about exactly what challenges the candidate will face, and this leads to mistrust, high turnover and an overall negative impact on workplace culture,” Rassas cautioned. “But that can be prevented by being explicit with what is expected of the person filling the role and making sure the candidates you’ve chosen can fulfill it.”
While many businesses advertise job openings on their websites, online job resources are a major factor in the modern hiring process. They often let you target individuals with the specific skill sets you want. Consider posting open positions on the following job sites:
You’ll likely receive an influx of applications from your job postings. Ideally, most are suitable candidates. However, you’ll have to sift through applications and resumés to eliminate those who don’t appear to be qualified or who aren’t quite what you’re seeking. Cover letters, portfolios and any additional materials you requested can help you narrow your candidate pool.
If you can’t find the right candidate for your job opening from the current applicant pool, you may need to revisit your job description.
“If you are not seeing the right type of candidate, pivot so you do see the best candidates,” Rassas suggested. “Yes, work is probably piling up, and yes, you want to get a candidate in the role right away, but a bit more effort on the hiring process before extending the offer is going to save you a lot of time in the long run.”
Create a shortlist of top candidates to advance to the interview stage. Before interviewing candidates, give them ample notice to allow them to prepare adequately.
“Inform the applicant about the interview ahead of time so [they can] prepare more,” Schwartz advised. “This will allow you to know the applicant better and to know if they are a perfect fit for the role because you have given them the time to prepare.”
After the first round of interviews, you may decide to narrow your applicant pool and proceed with a more thorough interview of candidates who advance to the second round.
“Whether it is in person or virtual, [the interview] remains the most important part of the hiring journey,” Deosingh noted. “It is when you get to ask the necessary questions and ideally form a bond with the candidate.”
Follow-up can take many forms. It might be as simple as a thank-you letter for the interviewee’s time or as formal as a job offer letter.
However, this stage isn’t just for calling or emailing the applicants. According to Deosingh, a post-interview evaluation is crucial.
“Don’t fall victim to the halo effect and be blinded by any potential weaknesses,” Deosingh warned. “Maintain perspective and take everything into account — not just the interview or resumé but the totality of what you’ve seen. Get input from others, but limit it to a small group to avoid brain drain.”
If you’ve interviewed many people and found high-quality candidates for the position, it’s essential to move quickly.
“Don’t delay in making a decision,” Deosingh advised. “Make sure all the stakeholders (if applicable) are available to interview and give feedback in a timely fashion. The demand for skilled employees is still high, and you can lose a potential hire to other opportunities if you delay.”
The exact offer you extend also matters.
“Make sure to give an irresistible job offer,” Schwartz recommended. “Most high-quality employees demand higher pay and good benefits.”
As a final step, consider conducting a background check to ensure no significant red flags exist before bringing the person into your workplace.
“If you think the prospective applicant suits the position you require, you can do a background check,” Schwartz said. “This will confirm the decision you made.”
According to Statista, 28 percent of global workers worked remotely in 2023. Because managing a remote workforce is commonplace today, many hiring managers must evaluate candidates for work-from-home positions. However, hiring and onboarding remote employees presents unique challenges. When funneling remote candidates through the hiring process, you must make a few adjustments.
“While the core principles of onboarding remain the same, there are differences,” Deosingh noted. “They cannot see your physical space. Much of the onboarding process [typically] includes the opportunity to see the space and get acclimated to the physical location.”
Here are a few ways to adapt the hiring and onboarding process to help keep remote workers engaged and set them up for success:
Ensure the following action items are on your onboarding checklist to set up your new hires for success:
Our experts provided a few more onboarding tips:
Hiring the right employees is a crucial part of growing a successful business, but finding the right fit can be a challenge. Working through each of the steps outlined above will help ensure you find people who are a cultural fit and skilled in the areas you need most.
Casey Conway contributed to this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.