Recruitment of the right people is crucial for the success of your business. A good hire can be invaluable, providing fresh resources and ideas to help your organisation to grow by reaching new markets and enhancing your reputation.

However, the cost of hiring mistakes it felt throughout an organisation. From lost time, reduced productivity, low morale and even low company growth.

An estimated 85% of HR decision-makers admit that their organisation has made a bad hire. This can easily cost an organisation £30,000. At mid-manager level with a salary of around £42,000, the cost to a business can be in the region of £130,000. In addition to the cost, the wrong hire can cause significant disruption and damage to morale, bringing down staff productivity, reducing work quality and creating HR headaches in the process. We know that strong talent retention and development strategies are critical for success. Every recruitment decision has a long-term effect on your business.

8 tips for finding your golden eggs

1. Understand all the characteristics and qualities you ideally want to find in the person for a particular job.
2. These should include critical specific and measurable outcomes, whether they have the skills for the role and the type of personality and attitude that will fit within the team and company.
3. Reflect on your instincts. Your gut feel may be the right one, but you must examine your reasons why. Never rely on gut feel alone.
4. Focus on the person and the skills they possess, not just on the experience they have.
5. Transferable skills like communication, resilience, creativity/problem-solving and leadership are great predictors of future success rather than just specific experience.
6. Investigate references and talk to someone a candidate has worked for in the past as this yields new insights and clarifies existing ones.
7. Use a third-party to bring a fresh perspective to the interview process.
8. Provide real-life scenarios for candidates which are representative of the role they need to succeed in, which will allow you to evaluate their performance.
9. Set clear expectations – clearly define the role, responsibilities, objectives and results from the start.
10. Make training and onboarding part of the recruitment process.

How to attract the right talent for your organisation

Your best brand ambassadors are your existing workforce. Ask them what the organisation is like to work for. This provides potential candidates with the essential information to have the confidence they need to see if their skills and experience will be a good fit.

Promoting your company culture through different communication channels helps to showcase your brand and resonate with the right kind of talent. Future employees like to work in places that have a good reputation and where they can engage with their identity and values.

Have a comprehensive picture of what you want and expect from each role in the organisation. This helps to identify and hire people who are a true fit for your company culture and the position itself. McQuaig captures a candidate’s attributes and personality to better understand how suitable they are to the job. With this you can benchmark, recruit, develop and retain the right people for your organisation.

From developing an effective interview process to crafting the right onboarding, finding the right employees matched to the right positions – being productive, contributing to positive company culture and morale – is one of the keys to long-term success and growth for any organisation. McQuaig is a suite of scientifically validated assessment tools. It enables top talent acquisition, reduces the risk of costly bad hires and predicts job performance and employee engagement.

McQuaig is an easy to use online profiling system that allows you to:

• Benchmark a role
• Recruit to the requirements of that role
• Develop your people based on their strengths
• Retain your best people
• Implement your succession planning strategy

McQuaig is a complete and cost-effective solution to create productive and engaged teams. Visit www.mcquaig.co.uk to find out more.