Knowing how to hire smart is a must for any employer, no matter what the economy looks like. A company that does not think strategically about recruiting could miss out on the best candidates, fail to hire a diverse workforce, or worse, expose itself to liability for discriminatory hiring practices. Hence, annually review and update your hiring process to make sure that you not only comply with the law but that it is still efficient and effective in delivering the best outcomes during the hiring process. Therefore, let's break down the main steps you need to look for, when reviewing and updating your hiring process:

• Review and update your job description: Prepare a detailed and thought-out job description that you can use for both hiring and employment purposes. When drafting the new job description comply with the following:
  • Go from general to specific when listing the duties and responsibilities of the job position. For example: As a technical architect you will work as part of a team to deliver innovative, cost-effective and efficient IT solutions to an organization. Your daily duties will include: Identifying an organization's needs; Agreeing plans with the client; Discussing the best products and systems with the client; Explaining plans to designers and developers; Producing progress reports; Dealing with problems as they arise (the path to IT never did run smooth); Advising clients on future developments.
  • State job qualifications and pre-requisites in an objective manner. For example: Must have a degree in maths, computer science, business information systems, or software development. Knowledge in programming, support, and design.
  • Clearly state in the job posting that you are an equal opportunity employer.
  • Clearly, state in the job posting that being chosen to undergo the hiring process is not a guarantee of employment without further requirements.
  • Pay attention to the use of language that might be considered in violation of the law of gender, race, age, or other discriminatory language. If your job post reads like this: Hiring female software developer for a young and energetic team, in most countries in the world, this job post is illegal and is in violation of the laws of gender and age. Something along the following lines would be suitable: Looking for a hard-working software developer that is also a good team player.
• Have a diversity of sources to recruit: Recruit at a broad range of colleges and technical schools, attend minority-sponsored job fairs, advertise in relevant community newspapers and, if possible, seek partnerships with organizations that are a source of diverse employees. As well, learn from companies that have a strong commitment to diversity. And keep in mind that unless your workforce is already diverse, relying heavily on recommendations from current employees will only maintain the status quo and will not help you increase diversity.
• Review the job applications with a lawyer: To make sure you are not asking for illegal and inappropriate information on your job application forms. For instance, if the country you are working in has laws prohibiting you from asking for the candidate's criminal record, and you have a question about prior arrests on the application form, you are exposing your organization to serious lawsuits and putting at risk the name and reputation of the organization.
• Regularly train your hiring managers: Training your hiring managers and all the employees in the hiring process on proper and new interviewing techniques helps to recognize and address recruiting mistakes and keep your organization away from any liability. Make sure that the best practices of the interview are part of the training, such as:
  
  • Ask open-ended questions: Open-ended questions allow the candidate to speak more about himself, helps calm down the levels of anxiety of the candidate, and gives you more information about the candidate's emotional intelligence skills (that is, managing their own emotions, dealing with stressful situations, and communication skills).
  • Limit the interview topics: Limit the topics to the issues that are needed to evaluate the candidate's qualifications for the position.
  • Use your critical thinking to evaluate the answers: For instance, did the candidate freely disclose all the information asked. Did the candidate fully respond to the queries or was he holding back information?
  • Take notes during the interview: Take written notes on a specific form. Don't write your notes on the application form or in the candidate's resume.
  • Keep your notes about the candidates legal and non-discriminatory: It could be seen as illegal or discriminatory if your notes are about the gender, race, age, national origin, disability, or other such identifiers of the candidate.
  • Be careful to not make promises or give guarantees of future employment: Comments such as: As long as you do a good job, you will always have a position with the company, or You are by far the strongest candidate I've interviewed--can be understood by the candidate as a guarantee of employment.
  • Have at least a panel of two interviewers: You will have more information about the candidate and make a more accurate decision.