When you’re hiring a new employee, you want to make sure that you’re picking the best possible candidate for your position. When it comes to hiring in today’s world, you have to look at more than whether or not a candidate is able to do the job that you’re hiring for. Here are the most important factors that you should keep in mind when seeking out a staffing agency to help you find your ideal candidate.

Enough Real-World Experience

This is one of the more basic parts of hiring — whether or not the candidate you’re considering has enough real-world experience to fill the role you’re hiring for. However, real-world experience can look different depending on the role you’re trying to fill. You may want someone who has experience in your specific field, whether that’s mechanical engineering or manufacturing, or you may want someone who just has management experience. It’s important to think about the type of experience you’re looking for while working with a staffing agency, though the best staffing agencies will be able to help you determine what qualities will be best in a potential hire.

Understand the Specific Job Responsibilities

When you’ve just decided that you need to hire a new employee, whether that’s to fill a new or an existing one, you should make sure that you have a clear outline of the new job’s day-to-day responsibilities as well as their overall responsibilities. This will not only help attract the right candidates and potentially decrease turnover for the position. Since your new employee will have an idea of what their role will entail, it will help them set expectations for their new position. Make sure you’re not underselling or overselling the responsibilities of a position to ensure that you can find the right candidate and grow with them.

The Cultural Fit

If you read any of the popular business or leadership books, you know the importance of creating the right culture to help your business thrive. A large part of the success of a company is having the right people involved, so considering whether or not your potential candidates will fit with the rest of your team is important to consider. Even more than that, you should consider whether or not the attitude and outlook of a candidate will fit with your team’s.

For example, if you have a fast-paced environment where there’s a lot of collaborative brainstorming and time spent working as a team, you might want to stay away from a candidate that enjoys working independently. Though they may seem qualified, the odds are they won’t thrive in your company’s culture and may end up leaving. Considering the fact that 60% of recruiters will take into account how an employee will fit culturally over any other prerequisites for qualifying for a job, this is a key part of hiring.

Keep Your Vision For Growth in Mind

When you’re hiring, you should not only be looking at how a candidate can fill any current roles in your company, but also any roles and responsibilities that may come along. As your company grows, your team may have to take on new responsibilities or learn to adapt their current position to fit the growth of the company.

During the interview process, you should be sure to ask about how your candidate has dealt with changes in their past work experiences to see how they may adapt to new challenges that come with a growing company. You should also use your interview questions to gauge whether an employee plans on staying in their position for some time and planning on growing with your company or if they want to move on after a few years with your company. Your staffing agency will take this into consideration when selecting candidates, but you’ll have to make sure to take growth into consideration as you continue narrowing your candidate pool.

Consider the Future Value to the Company

When you’re working with your mechanical engineering, manufacturing, or IT headhunter, you’ll want to take into account not only the skills an employee has that will work for your current position but any extra skills they may have. This follows along with the potential growth for your company but is a little different. If you’re hiring an employee that doesn’t necessarily have experience in your niche of your industry, this is something you should definitely be paying attention to.

For example, maybe there’s a certain program that you don’t currently use that an applicant is proficient in, or maybe they’ve worked in a different environment or field that your company could benefit from learning about. They may have skills that don’t seem useful to the way your company is currently operating, but as you continue to grow and evolve, those skills and experience could be helpful or even key to your company’s future.

Another example of this could be a candidate that has recently graduated. New graduates may not have a lot of real-world experience aside from an internship or two, but they could have new information or ideas that your company may not be considering. Depending on the position, you should consider even asking the mechanical engineering headhunter staffing your team to even specifically seek out recent college graduates.

Use Multiple Interviewers

When it comes to interviewing your potential candidate, you want to see how they’ll interact and get along with different members of your team. Before your staffing agency gives you the best potential candidates, you’ll want to think about your interviewing process and whether or not you’re having enough people meet your candidates. You want to make sure that you’re not just having your candidate interact with those that they will report to, but also interact with their peers. Make sure to also get feedback from everyone who interviews your candidates — someone may see a potential pro or con that you might miss. When you’re making sure that a candidate fits with your team’s culture, you’ll want to make sure that your team has a say.

During your different interviews, consider having 2-3 interviewers in the room to allow your team to allow as many people as possible to interact with your candidate. Having a mix of people from different roles in your company can be helpful when you’re selecting who to have in the room as well. Choosing to have a manager as well as someone in a similar role allows you to see both how they’ll interact with different roles in your company as well as giving the opportunity for them to get good answers to any questions they may have about the position.

When you’re working with a staffing agency to fill an open position at your company, you’ll want to make sure that you’re taking these factors into consideration. Thinking through how a candidate will fit not just within their role but within your company can help you get the perfect person on your team and may even reduce turnover.

If you’re looking for the best staffing agency in Philidelphia to help hire your team, get in touch with Kane Partners today. We’re here to help you find the perfect candidates to fill your team. We look forward to working with you!