Five top tips for hiring trustworthy employees

We know you work hard at getting your organisational culture right. You put a lot of time and effort into filling your business with the people who share your values, believe in your purpose and are committed to your goals, so a bad hire can upset that balance you’ve worked so hard to create.

Pre-employment screening is a great way of making sure you only hire the best people for your business: it reduces the risk of harm, fraud or bad publicity; ensures that the people you hire are authentic and genuine; and helps to attract higher quality applications by deterring unsuitable or unqualified candidates.

But you can only screen a candidate after their application has come in, so the question is: how do you attract the best and most trustworthy talent in the first place?

The first thing to bear in mind is that your ideal candidate has options.

It goes without saying that you want someone skilled, talented and passionate. You know how brilliant your business is and you know that the person you’re looking for would absolutely love working there. The problem? Every employer wants the same.

You need to sell your business as the most attractive option.

The recruitment process from a candidate’s perspective, including application, assessment, interview and screening, involves a huge amount of time, hard work and commitment. Without any guarantee of a job offer at the end of it, candidates think very carefully before they start this process, asking themselves, ‘Why put myself through potential stress and uncertainty if I’m not 100% sure I’d want the job if it was offered?’

Throughout the recruitment process there’s a lot you can do to help your ideal candidate make the decision to apply, and it all boils down to communication.

Here are a few things we think it’s important to consider:

1. Check, check and check again.

This sounds like an obvious one but does your job ad make sense? Can the candidate get a good idea of what they’ll be doing on a day-to-day basis? Can they picture the work environment and do they know what kind of team they’ll be part of? Are you using any jargon, acronyms or language that might not translate?

It’s always worth getting someone who doesn’t know the job or the business inside out to give your job ad a quick sense check. They might find the one thing that causes a great candidate to decide they’re giving it a miss in favour of a job that’s a little clearer.

2. Shout about what you care about.

What are your organisational values? What is your purpose? Why does your business matter? You want your ideal candidate to share your values and beliefs – that’s exactly what they want too!

You can only check if it’s a good match after the application has come in, but the candidate on the other hand is able to decide if it’s a match before they apply. It’s on you to make that assessment as easy as possible for the candidate, and to present a clear picture of what’s important to your business. The perfect candidate could come across your job advert, but if they can’t see that your values are aligned with their own, or worse still if they can’t see your values at all, that application might not get written. So be explicit, what is important to you.

3. Outline your recruitment process.

Different employers recruit in different ways. For one job, a candidate might submit a CV, attend an interview and learn the outcome within one week. For others the process might have many more steps and take much longer. Outlining your process, including stages and timescales (even if you can only give approximations), will help make your candidates feel comfortable and informed, which will ultimately build trust. The more a candidate can feel prepared and educated, the more likely they are to see the process through to the end and form a positive opinion of you as a prospective employer.

4. Show off what you have to offer.

In the same way as you’ll be looking for specific qualities and skills in your new employee, candidates are also likely to have specific things that they’re looking for in return for their hard work and experience. As we’ve said, candidates think carefully before committing to an application process, so if they can see from the offset that the job offers everything that they’re looking for, that might be just what they need to nudge them towards applying.

Candidates will need to know if they could afford to take the job, so is the salary on the job ad? What else are you able to offer your employees? Do you offer any memberships, transport schemes, pension contributions, training, volunteering hours, or wellbeing support? Packaging up your offer to employees, no matter how modest, can really help a candidate understand the staff culture and demonstrate that you care about employee happiness.

5. Keep in touch with your applicants.

We know a lot of work goes into recruiting – reviewing all of those applications, shortlisting, interviewing, assessing… It takes time. Sending updates to your candidates can easily fall to the bottom of your to-do list but, as we’ve mentioned, a lot of candidates will have put a great deal of time, love and passion into their applications. They like the look of your business, they think you share their values, they carefully read the person spec and job description, and they crafted applications with the hopes that you’d like to meet them. The last thing that they want is to not hear anything back and, worst case scenario, your ideal candidate might very easily accept a job offer elsewhere because they didn’t know if you were going to respond or because they were put off by the lack of communication.

Send an email to acknowledge receipt of an application, let candidates know that their application is being reviewed, and update them on the progress of your recruitment process. All of this can go a long way in helping your candidates form a positive opinion of you as an employer, and keeping your candidates informed builds their trust in you.

Trust goes both ways.

The important thing to remember in attracting the best, most trustworthy candidates is that it goes both ways: employees need to be confident they can trust and share their values with their employer just as much as you need to trust them. Remember, it’s the candidate who decides whether or not to apply, and you can’t screen anyone unless that application comes through.
So, keep on top of your communications and put some time into making sure that your job ads present all of the information that an applicant will need to see how amazing your business is!

How can we help?

While you’re busy with that, remember that we’re here to free up some of your time and help get the relationship with your new hire off to a great start. Regardless of your industry or size, get in touch to discuss your pre-employment screening needs or take a look at our range of on-demand screening packages to get started today.