Making hiring decisions can cause a lot of stress for anyone. Whether you’re a seasoned hiring manager or an owner of a small business looking to expand, hiring the right employee should take time and consideration. One of the best ways to make the process of hiring someone less stressful is to have an established interview process.

Making your interview process up as you go and pretending you have a plan in place can lead to a poor candidate experience. In order to find the best employees and ensure a smooth onboarding, you need to have an interview process and stick to it.

Step 1: Establishing a Calendar

No matter how desperate you may be for a new employee, it’s crucial to establish a realistic hiring and interviewing calendar. How long will you leave the position open for applications? How many interviews will you have? How long will you give candidates to respond? When you know the answers to these questions the entire process will go much more smoothly.

Step 2: Finding Candidates

After you’ve established your timeline, you need to start finding candidates. In today’s digital job market, it shouldn’t be too difficult. Depending on what industry you work in, there are a wide variety of job boards that you can post your open positions to. Make sure your content is engaging, descriptive, and not misleading.

Step 3: Screening

As the resumes and cover letters start pouring in, you want to start screening candidates. Depending on the volume of applications you receive, you will want to screen candidates based on resumes and based on a short phone interview. Use this as an opportunity to find candidates you can get excited about and ones that simply won’t make a great fit.

Step 4: Interviewing

After you’ve screened the applicants and have decided who you want to interview, it’s time to really start the process. Before each interview, you need to review the candidate and their skills/experiences. When you know a little about a person before meeting, the interview is going to be much more productive. You should also explain the rest of the process to each candidate—how many interviews there will be, when you hope to make a selection and so forth.

Step 5: Offering the Job

Once you’ve gone through the interview process with candidates, it’s time to offer the job. Before you do this though, you need to make sure the person you offer the job to is the best one for the position. Also make sure you communicate all of your expectations clearly to the person you’ve selected.

Step 6: Onboarding

The last step in your interview process is onboarding. Yes, you need to be thinking about this even before you have started interviewing. The onboarding process is crucial to a company’s employee engagement and can ultimately make or break your reputation.

What does your interview process look like? Do you have any helpful tips? Leave your stories and suggestions in the comments section below!