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In order to run a successful company, you need to attract and recruit exceptional talent. Having a collection of skilled employees ensures that you can service all your clients’ needs and provide them with the perfect product.

With that said, finding the right person for your empty position can be extremely difficult. With so much talent in the market, it can be both timely and expensive to find the ideal candidate!

To help streamline the process, we chatted with nine recruiting specialists to understand what steps need to be taken to find your perfect employee.

Know Exactly What You Need

It all begins with job benchmarking—knowing what you actually need. So many companies rarely have job descriptions with no less identifiable traits required to accomplish the job at hand. By taking extra time on the front end, employers will not only save time in the long run but money. Hiring the wrong people is extremely costly.
- Lorraine Bossé-Smith, Leadership Development Coach

Do They Have Applicable Experience?

When I'm hiring, I always look at the specific work experience someone has gotten. Even if they don't have the exact hard skills (like working with a specific technology), they may have the soft skills and applicable experience. For example, if someone knows HTML from running their own blog on WordPress, but has not had the opportunity to publish content on a company's blog, at least you know they can actually blog and see their writing style. On the flip side, if they haven't ever worked with a marketing automation platform like HubSpot or Pardot, but they can write a decent email with no typos, then they'll probably be able to learn MarTech quickly.
- Lauren Patrick, Curricula

Ask Questions Beyond Their Work Knowledge

Talent is everywhere, and while that is a huge part of the equation, so is the person’s character, work ethic, and attitude. To better determine how the candidate is as a person, ask them questions that go beyond their work knowledge. This could be asking what they would do in certain situations that pertain to their co-workers, their boss, work conflict, and even how they would run the company if they were in charge. Questions like these will better help you understand the type of person you are bringing into your company and go beyond what skills their resume lists.
- Candi Luciano, Y Scouts

Know Your Company Gaps

Know exactly what gaps you need to be filled on your team in the first place. This includes both soft skills as well as technical acumen. It becomes much clearer much earlier who's the best fit when you name the specific needs of your workplace rather than vague ideas.

For instance, say your team is in desperate need of a new content marketer. Does that hire need SEO experience? Do they have past agency work? Roles where they have led a marketing team or have they only worked on the creation or implementation side? Answer these questions, and you'll have a much clearer candidate in mind.
- Ty Stewart, Simple Life Insure

Consider Multiple Evaluation Strategies

Don’t rely solely on an interview to find the right person for the job. Consider other evaluation strategies that will ensure you found a good fit, not just someone that is a good interviewer. Pair the interviewing process with a personality test, a skill-based questionnaire, or some other sort of exercise to go beyond the standard process. 
- Carey Wilbur, Charter Capital

Create a Selection Rubric

Create a selection rubric that has the skills, experiences, and mindsets that align with the job description. Recruit with a focus on tapping underrepresented groups (BIPOC, LGBTQIA, etc). Build an inclusive hiring process that will give you multiple perspectives on a candidate to make an informed decision.
- Ron Rapatalo, Edgility Consulting

Pay Attention to the Growth of the Position

Understand the candidate and pay attention to how you see their position growing within the next few years. It’s important to thoroughly screen potential candidates, but there’s a difference between making sure you get a solid sense of the work style and capabilities of your candidate and diving too deeply into the minutiae. It's also vital to understand the role that you are hiring for and know how the candidate’s goals align with the company's culture and vision.
- Vidya Betesh, Human Resources Generalist

Understand Your Internal Company Culture

The most important thing for any hiring manager to do in order to find the right person for a role is to understand the internal culture of the company. Without understanding what values are prioritized and how people function within an organization, they won’t be able to find someone who will thrive in that environment. By finding a culture fit first, most other things will fall into line.
- Stephanie Schull, Kegelbell

Get a Technical Fit and a Culture Fit

When looking to expand your team, it is important that you hire individuals who are both a technical and cultural fit for your organization. The only way to determine if a candidate is the right fit is to ask them diverse questions during their interview. Go beyond their resume and ask them about their passions, hobbies, etc. You'll learn more about them and get a better sense of who they really are!
- Nikitha Lokareddy, Markitors