While posting a job opening you want to attract the best candidates for the position, but you need to be careful where you draw the line. It’s one thing to offer options and be a little generous, but you don’t want to be an extreme over-spender. You want a decent amount of excellent choices without the hours of sifting through under-qualified candidates.
Though it may be difficult there are three main requirements to focus on while trying to capture the best candidates. These include: compensation, recruitment and selection.
Compensation: Before you even post a job opening, compensation should be decided. While writing a job description you will realize just how much or how little is expected of the new employee and that will help determine just where to place the compensation. Of course, you should have a high and low end. A high-end would be the more experienced and qualified and the low-end would be for someone who maybe doesn’t have as much experience but is a hard worker and willing to learn (plus make room for raises).
Deciding on compensation can also help you to expect what sorts of candidates to expect, and really what you target audience is.
If you’re only offering a job position starting at $9.00 an hour, then you can expect some less than miraculous candidates. But with this being said, there will always be a few candidates who truly are great workers and even at $9.00 an hour they will be willing to work hard for your company. These are the type of workers you want.
Don’t forget how appealing benefits and bonuses can be also. Especially if it’s a candidate you really want for your company, you may be willing to negotiate in price a bit, or even add some special benefits. But again, don’t get too extreme. The negotiation needs to be mutual in some way, you don’t want to over-pay a worker for their talents.
Recruitment: When searching for a candidate it’s sometimes best to keep the position on a less public level. For instance, if you work for a very corporate company and need a higher level position filled it may be best to post the position through the company.
It’s much easier to hire a candidate from the company who is already aware of the way the company works and there’s really no fighting to win over the candidate (except for compensation). This also gives other employees a chance to move up, and eventually you can hire a new lower-level position that takes less skill and overall less time and money from the company to find.
Selection: Again, this goes back to compensation. Make a top 3 list of options, and schedule and interview with each of them. Some will show to be much more enthusiastic or maybe even more knowledgeable for the job. Be sure that at this point the compensation is set. You know their strengths and weaknesses and you know what you’d be willing to pay.
If an applicant doesn’t have much experience but seems to be overall intelligent, enthusiastic and willing to learn, maybe give them a shot!
Don’t rush making your final decision. Bad hires and a high rate of turnovers is very expensive for the company as it takes much time and money to fire/ and then find new candidates. When you’ve found the right applicant you will know, and all the time and waiting will be worth it.