The Ultimate Hiring Cheatsheet – Create the Best New Hire Checklist

Improve the efficiency of your hiring process by following our new hire checklist

There’s so much focus on new technology and how implementing digital solutions can improve businesses. It’s true that technology creates huge opportunities to make your business more efficient and productive. However, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that your company’s greatest asset is not a piece of equipment or new software. It’s your workers who are your greatest asset and implementing a new hire checklist is key to maximizing this resource.

This applies to permanent staff and contingent workers alike. It may actually be more important with contractors because they are often the ones most responsible for the execution of a project. If you are building solar farms, roads or any large infrastructure project, you want the people responsible for building it to be the best you can find. A workforce is only as strong as its weakest link so you want to be sure that all your workers are of a high and uniform quality. One worker making a mistake can lead to a costly delay and even injury or death.

The secret to hiring is all about the tactics you use. We put together a new hire checklist full of great hiring tactics that can maximize your onboarding process, allowing you to find the best candidates for your business and train them efficiently to do the job that you need done.

1) Map Your Ideal Candidate:

When hiring someone, it’s important that you know exactly the role you’re trying to fill and the kind of person you want to hire. Having a new hire checklist is extremely important in this stage. Coordinate the relevant departments so that all their needs are aligned before HR is involved and new employee forms drawn up. Visualizing who your ideal hire is a great way to define your job advertisement and ensure you end up with the right person at the end of the process. Here are a few tips to follow to map your ideal candidate:

• Who from your current workforce performs very well.
• What characteristics do they display?
• Which characteristics are ‘nice-to-have’ and which are a ‘must-have’?

It may also be necessary to do some research into the job you’re trying to fill. Being clear on what the role is and its responsibilities mean that you will hire the right person for your business. It’s also just a good exercise to clarify the position. This will help give a clearer picture of who you need to hire and the skills and attributes that should be prioritized.

2) Sell Yourself:

It may not always seem like it but there are so many great potential applicants out there who would make a great addition to your business. Half the battle is attracting the right people to your business. When writing a job advertisement, always bear in mind that second word, ‘advertisement’. Your job posting should be snappy and engaging, with an eye on to your desired audience. Write a job advertisement which will attract the best and repel the worst.

A good way to do this is to sell your company to the candidate based around claims, features and benefits. This can form the basic structure of your job advertisement so you attract great candidates. For example:

• Claim: We are a learning organisation.
• Feature: We deliver 1 hour of training per week.
• Benefit: Continuous improvement and growth for the candidate.

This can be incorporated into the advertisement to help sell your company and the available position. Another tip is to write the job posting in a way that describes the successful applicant not the job applicant. You want to describe the successful applicant not just list qualifications. This helps avoid wasting your company’s and applicant’s time. The ultimate goal is to get great candidates interested in joining your company.

3) Weed Out Unsuitable Candidates Using a New Hire Checklist:

This an important part so you don’t waste time later on in the onboarding process. You want to find someone who is genuinely interested in working for your organization. They need to be suitably qualified and appear to be a fit for the existing company culture. There are various strategies you can use before and after the final interview stage to narrow down the applicants:

• When the candidate is applying, be sure to include some ‘pre-qualification questions’ as part of the new hire checklist, e.g., do they have the relevant working visas, do they have at least x years experience.
• Set rules and award points when scanning CV’s – refer back to your nice-to-have and must-have skills and qualifications.
• Check worker referrals to ensure they were previously compliant with safety guidelines and were no threat to other employees
• Conduct 20 minute phone interviews and book them in over a short space of time. This makes it easier to compare candidates.
• Ask candidates to take online psychometric assessments and match up your ideal characteristics.
• Have any reservations about the candidates qualifications prepared for the final interview so that you can make a decision immediately after the interview.

4) Train Your Workers:

Finding great candidates is hugely important but the work is only half-done. You want to ensure that your workers are given the best chance to succeed by training them for the job, with information relating to their daily tasks and of any safety hazards and risks. Technology can be a great help with training and onboarding your new workers:

• Ensures all candidates are trained the same on starting.
• All candidates are up to speed on company policy, safety training and protocols.
• Candidates details such as payroll info, certifications and photos are captured in advance.
• Time and resources previously used for training can now be used to find the best candidates.
• Streamlines the onboarding process by digitizing new employee forms.

A company’s workforce is their greatest resource so should be appropriately valued. Companies spend a lot of time investigating the pros and cons of purchasing new equipment and it’s important that the human side of a business gets the same attention. When hiring workers, you need to be sure what you need and what are your main priorities. There needs to be proper planning, including a new hire checklist so that the best candidates find your business and are interested in applying. Once an appropriate worker is brought on board, and their documents and new employee forms are taken care of, they should be trained so that they can reach their full potential and be as productive as possible.