by Jerry Mooney

When you have a gap in your workforce that you need to fill with a new employee, you probably think that you need to find the ‘perfect’ candidate. However, it isn’t really clear whether the ‘perfect’ candidate exists. They probably do somewhere in the world, but the chances of them looking for a job in your town, state, or even your country would be low!

This doesn’t mean you have to settle when hiring, though. You just need to be both smart and realistic.

Read on and you might just find a close to perfect hire for your company:

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Defining What You Want As Clearly As Possible

Sit down and define what you want as clearly as possible before you write a single job post out. Do you want an individual with a sense of humor who will easily be able to integrate into your company culture? Do you want somebody who can multitask like a pro, or do the splits on command? Try to separate what you think you want/need from what you actually want/need. Asking for too much in your job advertisements can stop people who would have done a great job from applying. You need to get the balance right! If you haven’t got the time to wait for the perfect employees to come banging down your door, you could work with a staffing company, who will use applications like http://prim-software.com/ to shorten the process and get you a qualified and suitable candidate in barely any time at all. However, you’ll need to make sure the company you work with has all of the legal stuff in place, such as insurance and contracts that protect you both. The people who are presented to you should be employees of the company, and not contractors!

Remember: Qualifications Aren’t Everything

Unless you’re looking to hire a brain surgeon, it’s unlikely that many of the qualifications you might think you’re looking for actually matter. Qualifications can give an idea of the knowledge a person has, but they can’t tell you anything about the personality of a person, whether they’ll fit into your company culture, and even the talent a person has. It isn’t difficult to teach yourself various skills with the help of the internet these days, so somebody may apply for your job with very few qualifications and actually end up being the best choice in terms of talent.

How can you make sure that you’re hiring the right person if even qualifications don’t tell you all you need to know? Make sure you’re prepared to be in the hiring process for the long haul. Narrow down your candidates based on only things that are compulsory by law. Give people a chance, or you might just miss out on a ‘perfect’ person. Of course if their application was poor and they have littered it with spelling mistakes, you’d be forgiven for not getting back to them. However, you need to look at things on a case by case basis and get them in for interviews this way.

The ‘perfect’ employee may not exist, but you’ll be able to find one very near perfect if you bear these points in mind! Leave your own hiring tips below if you have any.