Six Figure Boss Chick

Selection and Hiring Checklist

Want to recruit and hire a superior workforce? This checklist for hiring employees will help you systematize your process for hiring, whether it's your first employee or one of many employees that you are hiring. This checklist helps you keep track of your recruiting efforts.

This hiring checklist communicates both the recruiting and the hiring process  and progress in recruiting to the hiring manager. Your feedback and comments are welcome to improve this checklist for hiring employees.

Checklist for Hiring Employees

• Determine the need for a new or replacement position.
• Think creatively about how to accomplish the work without adding staff (improve processes, eliminate work you don’t need to do, divide work differently, and so forth).
• Hold a recruiting planning meeting with the recruiter, the HR leader, the hiring manager, and, potentially, a coworker or internal customer.
• Develop and prioritize the key requirements needed for the position and the special qualifications, traits, characteristics, and experience you seek in a candidate. (These will assist your Human Resources department to write the classified ad; post the job online and on your website, and screen resultant resumes for potential candidate interviews.)

• With HR department assistance, develop the job description for the position.
• Determine the salary range for the position.
• Decide whether the department can afford to hire an employee to fill the position.
• Post the position internally on the job opportunities bulletin board in your lunchroom and on your company intranet for one week. If you anticipate having difficulty finding a qualified internal candidate for the position, then state in the posting that you are advertising the position externally at the same time.

• Send an all-company email to notify staff that a position has been posted and that you are hiring employees.
• All staff members should encourage talented, qualified, diverse internal candidates to apply for the position. (If you are the hiring supervisor, as a courtesy, let the current supervisor know if you are talking to his or her reporting staff member.)
• Interested internal candidates fill out the Internal Position Application.
• Schedule an interview,for internal candidates, with the hiring supervisor, the manager of the hiring supervisor or a customer of the position and HR. (In all cases, tell the candidates the timelines you anticipate the interview process will take.)

• Hold the interviews with each interviewer clear about their role in the interview process. (Cultural fit, technical qualifications, customer responsiveness, and knowledge are several of the screening responsibilities you may want your interviewers to assume.)
• Interviewers fill out the Job Candidate Evaluation Form.  
• If no internal candidates are selected for the position, make certain that you clearly communicate with the applicants that they were not selected. Whenever possible, provide feedback that will help the employee continue to develop their skill and qualifications. Use this feedback as an opportunity to help the employee continue to grow their career.

• If an internal candidate is selected for the position, make a written job offer that includes the new job description and salary.
• Agree on a transition timeline with the internal candidate’s current supervisor.
• If you've created another internal opening, begin again.
• End the search.
• If no qualified internal candidates apply, extend the search to external candidates, if you didn't advertise the position simultaneously. Develop your candidate pool of diverse applicants.
• Spread word-of-mouth information about the position's availability in your industry and to each employee’s social and real-world network of friends and associates.

• Network and post jobs on online social media sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn. Ask your employees to publicize the position through their online social media networks.
• Place a classified ad in online and offline newspapers with a delivery reach that will create a diverse candidate pool.
• Recruit Online. Post the classified ad on jobs boards and newspaper-related websites including your own company recruiting website.
• Post the position on professional association websites.
• Talk to university career centers and attend career days.

• Contact temporary help agencies.
• Brainstorm other potential ways to locate a well-qualified pool of candidates for each position.
• Through your recruiting efforts, you've developed a pool of candidates. People are applying for your open job. Whether you have developed a candidate pool in advance of the job opening or you are searching for an employee from scratch, the development of a qualified pool of candidates is crucial.
• Send emails to each applicant to acknowledge receipt of the resume. Simply acknowledge your receipt of their application. Make no other statements. (Qualifiers such as the following were once popular with employers, but they open you up to the possibility of legal problems down the road: "If the candidate appears to be a good match for the position, relative to your other applicants, you will contact them to schedule an interview. If not, you will keep their application/resume on file for a year in case other opportunities arise.)

• Once you have developed a number of applicants for the position,  screen resumes and/or applications against the prioritized qualifications and criteria established. Note that resume cover letters matter as you screen potential employees.
• Create a short list of applicants after the hiring manager and Human Resources staff review the applications that they have received for a particular job.
• Phone screen the short list of candidates whose credentials look like a good fit ​for the position. Determine candidate salary requirements, if not stated with the application, as requested. (Note that an increasing number of jurisdictions across the US are making this practice illegal, so know the laws where you work.)

• Schedule qualified candidates, whose salary needs you can afford, for a first interview with the hiring supervisor and an HR representative, either in-person or on the phone. In all cases, tell the candidates the timeline you anticipate the interview process will take.
• Ask the candidate to fill out your official job application, upon their arrival for the interview.
• Give the candidate a copy of the job description to review.
• Hold screening interviews during which the candidate is assessed and has the opportunity to learn about your organization and your needs.

• Fill out the Job Candidate Evaluation Form for each candidate interviewed.
• Meet to determine which (if any) candidates to invite back for a second interview.
• Determine the appropriate people participating in the second round of interviews. This may include potential coworkers, customers, the hiring supervisor, the hiring supervisor’s manager and HR. Only include people who will have an impact on the hiring decision.
• Schedule the additional interviews.
• Hold the second round of interviews with each interviewer clear about their role in the interview process. (Culture fit,technical qualifications, customer responsiveness, and knowledge are several of the screening responsibilities you may want your interviewers to assume.)

• Candidates participate in any testing you may require for the position.
• Interviewers fill out the candidate rating form.
• HR checks the finalists (people to whom you are considering offering the position) credentials, references, background check, and other qualifying documents and statements.
• Anyone who has stated qualifications dishonestly or who fails to pass the background check is eliminated as a candidate.
• Through the entire interviewing process, HR, and managers, where desired, stay in touch with the most qualified candidates via phone and email.

• Reach consensus on whether the organization wants to select any candidate (via informal discussion, a formal discussion meeting, HR staff touching base with interviewers, candidate rating forms, and so on). If dissension exists, the supervising manager should make the final decision.
• If no candidate is superior, start again to review your candidate pool and redevelop a pool if necessary.
• HR and the hiring supervisor agree on the offer to make to the candidate, with the concurrence of the supervisor’s manager and the departmental budget. (Always consider these factors before you make a job offer.) 

• Talk informally with the candidate about whether he or she is interested in the job at the offered salary and stated conditions. Make certain the candidate agrees that they will participate in a background check, a drug screen, and sign a Non-compete Agreement or Confidentiality agreement, depending on the position. (This should have been signed off on when filling out the job application.) If so, proceed with an offer letter. You can also make the job offer contingent on certain checks.
• If not, determine if negotiable factors exist that will bring the organization and the candidate into an agreement. A reasonable negotiation is expected; a candidate that returns repeatedly to the company requesting more each time is not a candidate the company wants to hire.

• If the informal negotiation leads the organization to believe the candidate is viable, HR will prepare a written position offer letter from the supervisor that offers the position, states and formalizes the salary, reporting relationship, supervising relationships, and any other benefits or commitments the candidate has negotiated or the company has promised.
• The offer letter, the job description, and the Company Non-Compete  or Confidentiality Agreement are provided to the candidate.
• The candidate signs the offer letter documentation to accept the job or refuses the position.

• If yes, schedule the new employee's start date. Pursue welcoming the new employee from the minute they accept your job offer.
• If no, start again to review your candidate pool and redevelop a pool if necessary.