Imagine hiring a high paid executive, firing them after only three months and paying them a one-year severance package costing over $230,000. This just happened in Montreal according to this article that appeared last week in the Montréal Gazette.

According to a study by Oxford economics it costs over $40,000 to replace a staff member. The cost estimation is based on lost productivity during the ramp-up period for new employees, as well as the cost of recruitment. To avoid these costs and reduce turnover, here is a checklist of things you should be doing to ensure hiring the right person.

Go through this list and see what you are leaving out and why you choose to do so. For the things on the list you’re already doing, measure how well you think you’re doing for each on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being excellent. Keep in mind there’s always room for improvement.

1. Write a good job description for the position. You can consult my previous article on writing a job description and even download a job description template.
2. Write a good job advertisement that has you stand out from the crowd. This is especially important for highly competitive positions where you may be competing against top brand companies. Here is an example of a job advertisement I wrote for one of my clients that is different from most. As well, here is an article showing five examples of creative job postings.
3. Ask your candidates to write a letter explaining why they would be the best person for the job. This not only tells you how motivated they are but also gives insight into their written communications and their ability to express themselves. Job seekers will send out many resumes but only those really interested in working for you will take the time to write this. This can be stated in your job posting as I did in my example.
4. Create a career page on your website that is designed to promote your company in workplace to potential candidates. You want to attract the best people so there’s some selling involved here. Make this multimedia rich by adding photos, videos and quotes from employees about their experience working for the company. I’m assuming here that people like working for as often people are seeking a better work environment and relationship with their boss or coworkers. Here’s an article and video about using an about us video to attract the right candidates.
5. Advertise the job on the right platform for your target candidates. Use word-of-mouth marketing through current employees, suppliers, customers and personal contacts. Almost half of jobs are filled through word-of-mouth.
6. Use online search tools such as LinkedIn recruiter, LttileBIGJob or Indeed to approach non-active jobseekers who might just need a nudge to consider working for a better employer.
7. Conduct interviews with reference checking in mind so that you ask pertinent questions about the candidate’s past that can be verified with their former employers. Read more about this in this article and video. Inform candidates at the first interview that you will be checking the information they provide with their past employers. This keeps them honest in the interviews, especially if you keep reminding them of this.
8. Use assessments and skill testing to better qualify the best candidates and gather more information to help you make more objective hiring decisions. I use multiple assessments throughout the hiring process. Check out this article and video for more information.
9. Conduct second or third interviews to dig deeper with candidates after you’ve gone through the skill testing and assessments.
10. Check references using the information the employees provided during the interviews. Get employees to give measurable indicators of their past performance that can be verified with their former bosses. Ask the candidate to arrange the reference interviews with their former employers. This way you don’t have to spend time chasing people to get them to speak with you. If they can’t do it for whatever reason you know there is a problem and you need to find out what it is.

How well are you doing and applying the above best practices for good hiring? What can you do to improve?

Hiring the right person is a crucial step in good job performance and employee retention. I’ll go more into these two other components in future articles and videos, so subscribe to our blog and newsletter and videos.

Stephen Goldberg