How to create an effective hiring approval process

Hiring new employees for your company is always exciting. It means you’re growing and you have space in your budget to bring on new team members. But establishing a clear process for hiring new employees is especially important. It’s unlikely that one person in your company has total hiring power, so you need to be sure that everyone on your hiring team is on the same page.

Whoever you add to your company needs to be a good fit for your culture, and you need to assure your team members that the right steps are in place to achieve a good end result. After all, they’re the ones who’ll interact with your new hires every day.

Maintaining company morale is an essential part of running a healthy business with employees who are committed to your mission. Here’s what you need to know about establishing an effective hiring approval process to keep your business running smoothly.

1. Appeal to your applicants

During the hiring approval process, the first step in attracting top-notch applicants to your job posting is making sure it includes all the relevant information.

Sell your business to prospective employees — what separates you from your competition, and why should someone want to work at your company? Be sure you know what you’re looking for — this will help in writing the job description and ensure that quality candidates find your posting.

When applicants do apply, be proactive in reaching out to them to show interest and illustrate how you’d treat them if they came to work for your business.

2. Know what you’re looking for

Hiring a new employee requires everyone on your team to be on the same page. In the hiring approval process, make sure that anyone who has a say in hiring knows the right questions to ask.

If you’re hiring for a specific team, consider the personalities on that team and how a new employee might fit with the dynamic they’ve established.

Even better, consider how you’ve designed your hiring approval process in the past and what you might want to change to produce a better result. Tracking your past hires and the actions you took to bring in now-valuable members of your team can help inform your thinking when it comes time to bring on someone new.

3. Be consistent

Consistency is perhaps the most important element in an effective hiring approval process. If you’ve established guidelines for evaluating candidates, be sure to stick to them. Grading one candidate by one set of rules and another candidate by a different set of rules is an easy way to get your wires crossed.

Commit to one path. If possible, make sure the same team members are present for each interview and that they ask the same questions for each candidate. This way, you can connect with your hiring team to trade notes as well as further refine the characteristics you’re looking for in a candidate.

4. Conduct thorough interviews

Interviewing is the most direct method to get answers and data about prospective candidates. Before you interview a potential new employee, make sure everyone on your hiring team has a say in strategizing how you’ll gather information.

The more perspectives you allow, the more well-rounded your interview questions will be. You can ensure as efficient a process as possible and ask pointed questions to get to the heart of what you’re looking for.

5. Take advantage of Jotform Workflows

Keeping organized is necessary in a hiring approval process. Organizing all your materials in the same place and maintaining files on each of your candidates is the best way to ensure everything runs smoothly.

With Jotform’s Form Builder, you can customize and design your own forms. And Jotform Workflows allows you to convert your forms into a hiring approval process. Everyone on your team can access these forms and approval requests, and they can view them on any device as well as with the Jotform Mobile Forms app.

Plus, with Jotform Workflows, your hiring team can shape the process around their needs. You can add detailed notes on candidates and create customized forms tailored to your hiring specifics. Jotform Tables allows you to view all of your requests and approvals in one place. Whatever your hiring requirements, Jotform has the capability to handle and store your information every step of the way.

6. Adding to your team

Hiring new employees can be stressful. It’s an added task on top of all of the regular work you have to do. That’s why it’s important to have the right steps in place to stay on track.

While it’s great that your business is growing, it won’t mean much if the employees you bring aboard don’t add the value you need to maintain this growth. Devising the right hiring approval process — and capitalizing on platforms like Jotform Workflows — is an effective method to put your company on the fast track to short-term and long-term success.