The reality is, recruiting new staff is a highly personal process. Not only does the successful candidate need to have a particular skill set (or the ability to quickly acquire certain skills). You also need a new employee to fit the culture and interpersonal dynamics of your team or workplace. But this leaves employers potentially exposed to unconscious bias.
So how do you avoid discrimination during the recruitment process?
Here’s our 10 step recruitment process to help you screen candidates and select the best fit for your organisation.
Step 1: Ascertain the specific tasks that will need to be performed in the role.
Step 2: Identify the skills and/or qualifications required to do these tasks.
Step 3: Determine whether the role requires a certain level of experience or if budget constraints mean you are happy to employ and train an inexperienced candidate.
Step 4: Itemise both the essential and the desirable criteria that will be used to screen candidates.
Step 5: Nominate the people who will be conducting the interviews. We recommend conducting panel interviews. On the panel, include someone who understands the role as well as someone who understands the team culture. The End2End team often assist our clients during the interview process because of our unique questioning techniques that really test candidates to draw out any flaws or hidden strengths.
Step 6: Prepare the job ad ensuring you only mention the essential role requirements and key selection criteria you identified in the previous steps. Then get the ad checked to ensure it is free of discriminatory phrases. We can help with this step or write the job ad for you.
Step 7: If you use an application form, also ensure it is carefully worded and free from potentially discriminatory questions.
Step 8: Prepare your list of interview questions and check you aren’t asking biased or discriminatory questions. This is also the time to determine if you will be conducting any pre-interview or pre-employment tests.
Step 9: Select the applicants to be interviewed.
Step 10: Select the successful candidate and speak with their nominated referees. If everything checks out, contact the successful candidate and be sure to document your reasons for selecting them. This could be important if you need to justify your decision to any unsuccessful candidates (or the Fair Work Commission). This is also the stage to have the employment contract or modern award documentation available and ready to give to the successful candidate. As always, we can help you with all employment documentation.
At NO stage do any of the following:
1. Take photos of candidates unless their appearance is an essential requirement of the role (modelling work is an obvious exception to this rule).
2. Never contact a candidate’s referees without their prior approval to do so.
Expert help is always on hand
The End2End team are expert recruiters for a wide range of industries and across most roles. We can help you with specific aspects of the recruitment process or we can guide you throughout the entire process.
Whether you already have your own team or you are a first-time employer, we are here to help you. It all starts with a chat so call End2End Business Solutions on 02 8977 4002.