As many global economies are growing, there is a stronger demand for talent. You will need a streamlined hiring process to avoid being left behind by your competition.

This checklist is to help you through the hiring process. We cover the usual tasks such as:

• Assembling an intake meeting
• Creating the job description
• Screening candidates
• Arranging the interview

We also suggest some new ideas you may not have encountered before. These include:

• Looking at your company’s brand and its online presence
• Starting the onboarding process before your new hire’s first day

We also provide ready-made templates to assist you further with the hiring process.

With Process Street your tasks can be made easier and are often already done for you.

Although it’s the hiring manager who decides to take on a new hire, the need for the new hire should always be scrutinized. Doing this will help later in creating a job description for the vacancy.

Using the form fields below, have a quick phone call with the hiring manager to answer the questions below:

Before spending money on advertizing a job, and getting further into the hiring process, always check for negative publicity. Your brand should be constantly monitored; try to check your brand every month. If you have over 500 employees, you should check your brand every week without fail.

Using the checklist below, run through these areas that need to be checked:

When responding to negative reviews, be patient and pragmatic in your response. This will indicate to potential candidates that you are open to criticism but are also looking to resolve it. 

Another way to improve your brand online is to have a great employee handbook in the public domain. You should make it interesting and something that will attract top talent to you. 

As an example, Tesla’s employee handbook is more concerned with personality characteristics and makes clear that trust is mission-critical.

If you've decided you need a new position and you feel your brand looks good online, it's time to move on.

You should now look at your old checklists and workflows. Your checklist, or workflow, will be a list of tasks that you complete in a specific order. With this in mind, look at the need the vacancy will fill and the tasks the position will deal with.

At Process Street, we have automated many job positions using this same process in optimized workflow templates.

To start simple, and fast, try to describe the job purpose in two sentences. Imagine that you are making a pitch to sell something. The movie director, James Cameron, once pitched Titanic as “Romeo and Juliet on a boat”. Your job description will not be so simple, but this process will help you remember what is most important about this role. 

The intake meeting is only necessary if a role is new or unique. The process can also be about the kind of person you want. This is different from hiring someone who perfectly matches your job description.

When hiring top talent, Jeff Bezos decides by using three questions:

• Will you admire this person?
• Will this person raise the average level of effectiveness of the group they’re entering?
• Along what dimension might this person be a superstar?

Try asking the above questions in your next intake meeting.

Nintendo also takes a different approach to hiring someone. They do not necessarily prioritize experience. Instead, Nintendo looks for focus. Consider this in your intake meeting.

As with most job descriptions on the market, you should include the following information as standard:

• A description of your company
• The duties of the job
• The requirements of the job

You might also add that you are willing to have an informal chat about the vacancy. This might help you to gain a sense of the candidate's soft skills.

You will also need to decide if the salary for the job vacancy is to be advertised. There is some evidence that companies who are forthcoming about their wages can attract better, more diverse talent.

You can also aid the screening process by emphasizing, in the job description, that you will take informal phone calls about the position. If you need some guidance, there is a download button below with two example job descriptions.

Use the below checklist to decide where you would like to advertise your new vacancy:

If the position will need a highly-skilled candidate, you may consider the option of using a recruiter to assist with an executive search.

We previously mentioned you could include, in your job description, that you are willing to have an informal chat about the vacancy. You can also find out if you missed any essential information in your advertisement, and ensure you are encouraging diversity.

If a candidate does call to have an informal chat about the vacancy, use the call to make sure your records of their personal details are correct:

You can also make a note of the candidate's soft skills while they are on the phone:

Many companies have used résumés to cull lists of applicants. It might be that they’ve looked at education as a starting point. Decisions such as that will promote bias which is something that all companies are now looking to avoid.

One way to remove unconscious bias from the process is to be skill-focused. You can easily arrange, online or on paper, a short anonymous aptitude test. This can be of great help if you are involving more people in the decision-making process. Having a panel decide on the outcome of a round of tests will most certainly help you to limit bias.

In large companies such as Tesla, CEOs such as Elon Musk prioritize skills over education. Soft skills: traits including common sense, work ethic, and trustworthiness are also highly sought after. Check out the below tweet by Elon as evidence:

You can also learn more about how a résumé might not produce the best hire in this helpful TED talk:

Rather than looking at which school the candidate attended, take a look at the certificate section of the candidate’s LinkedIn profile.

Platforms such as Udemy, and LinkedIn itself, offer online courses designed to help candidates reskill. The courses provide certificates on completion, together with the number of hours they took to complete. This will show you if the candidate has a self-serve attitude and has taken time out of their current position to improve their skills.

Learn more about the kind of courses LinkedIn is making available to candidates:

When meeting the candidates, remember that first impressions count. You should not allow the candidate to be left waiting in the lobby. It can set a bad impression if the candidate has to call you if there is no one there to meet them. 

Likewise, with video calling such as Zoom and MS Teams: make sure that the time arranged is suitable for remote candidates who may be living on the other side of the world.

If dress code is important to you, then you should state this when inviting the candidates for an interview.

You should also look outside of technical skills. Here is a list of questions you can ask the candidate regarding their soft skills:

• What does constructive criticism mean to you?
• How would you explain a complex topic to a new customer or colleague?
• What are the three most important aspects of a job, in your opinion?

After the interview, you may want to determine if the candidate has sold themselves well. This can be done with a short test to determine whether the candidate walks the walk as well as talks the talk.

As an example, if the candidate mentioned that they double-check everything, they could be given a fifteen to twenty-minute test. This could be a grammar and punctuation test. 

If a candidate has said they operate well under pressure and with a looming deadline, arrange a twenty-minute test to demonstrate that what they have said is true.

You can do this if the interview is in your office, or send the test via email if the candidate is a remote worker.

Obviously, the behavior of a candidate during an interview will be different from how they behaved in their last working position. When speaking with their recent references, you should also ask about their soft skills. This will indicate how successful the employee’s development will be in the future.

Always phone the candidate with the offer first. This saves the time and trouble of sending a letter if the candidate has already gone elsewhere. While the candidate is on the phone, ensure that all their details are still correct. Check if they will be moving or going on vacation shortly.

Look for anything that may delay your offer from being accepted.

You understand from your own prior experience as a new hire, that employee onboarding is incredibly helpful. That applies not just to your company but also to your new hire. For both of you, good onboarding will result in:

1. Improved job performance results
2. Less stress
3. More satisfaction with the result of the position

If you think back to your time as a new hire, you probably had spare time that could have been put to good use. With this in mind, ask yourself if you can provide the following to the new hire before their start date:

The cost of hiring a new employee is an average of around $65,000 and it takes 5 months of full-time employment to bring new hires up to full productivity. Failure to properly onboard a new hire will cost significant amounts of time and money.

You can reduce this cost by implementing a first-day and 90-day checklist for your new hire. Process Street provides both of these resources: please take a look at the relevant checklists below.

• Alex Christian - 'Great Flirtation': Should workers constantly job hunt?

• Jack Kelly - Tesla’s Leaked Employee Handbook Is As Unconventional As Founder Elon Musk

• Naomi Nix - Removing Résumés From Hiring Process Can Improve Diversity
• Stephanie Denning - How Jeff Bezos Hires Great People
• Keith Stuart and Keza MacDonald - Inside Nintendo's secretive creative process
• Microsoft - Interview tips for all roles
• Mark Johanson - Why companies don't post salaries in job adverts
• Ray Dalio - Principles
• Sprockets - 10 Interview Questions to Evaluate Soft Skills

• Ari Meisel’s How to Streamline the Hiring Process Guide
• Diversity Hiring Process
• Recruitment Process Checklist
• Ray Dalio’s Hiring Process
• Sales Manager Job Description Template
• Accountant Job Description Template
• Software Developer Job Description Template
• Marketing Manager Job Description Template
• HR Interview Process With Questions
• Job Offer Approval Process
• Human Resources Pre Employment Screening
• Employee Onboarding Checklist
• New Hire Checklist Template
• The First 90 Days Checklist: A Template for New Hires