You believe that you have selected the most talented and outstanding applicant for your advertised role, ‘The One’, who is going to help you take your business to incredible heights – so now what?

Here are some tips to get you started:

• If there are outstanding questions or concerns you have about your chosen candidate, call them in for a second interview or have them meet someone else in your team for a second opinion. Never lose sight of the fact that they are interviewing you as much as you are interviewing them. If you are interested at interview, give them some sense of this such as:

1. asking them when they can start should they be successful
2. saying hypothetically ‘if you were to be offered this role do you think you would accept and why?’ (Otherwise known as a trial close)
3. asking whether they have any other interviews or offers pending and what stage are they at?
4. if they are close to an offer elsewhere, ask them to call you prior to accepting

These are all subtle signs of interest from you without actually offering the role. At the end of the interview, if you are still keen, tell them that they interviewed well but you have a few other people to interview.  

• It’s also worth noting that you want your candidates to meet about 70% of your criteria to give them space to grow – otherwise you risk them getting bored and leaving. I also strongly endorse hiring on attitude and fit to the business, not just technical ability.
• Don’t get carried away and advise your second and third preferred candidates that they have been unsuccessful until you have a signed contract in your hands. It sounds obvious but it’s very hard to go back to a candidate you have rejected and say ‘oops, sorry our preferred candidate rejected us, so how about it?
• On that note, leave your job ad live until the contract is signed as well – most job ads are live for a month; make sure you get the value out of your advertisement and retire your ad only after the ink is dry on the contract.

So now you are ready to make the offer, great – but before leaping into offering them the job, ask them whether they are still interested and if they have any more questions. Once you are comfortable, they are ‘the one’ verbally offer them the role. It should go something like this – ‘Jo, we think you have some great skills and possess the attitude that typically makes people succeed in our business. We would be thrilled if you would join us. We would like to offer you $55k inclusive of super with a start date of 17th November. How does that sound?’

If they ask to think about it, this is fine, but do ask them if they have any concerns. That way you might be able to alleviate these straight away. Do ask them when they can let you know – this shouldn’t be more than a week or, otherwise, I’m afraid they are not as keen on you as you are on them!

If they verbally accept the offer, remind them that it is subject to satisfactory reference checks. Once these are completed get the written contract out ASAP.

Natasha Hawker is the Director & Senior HR Practitioner at Employee Matters – specialists in Employment Relations, recruitment, performance management, terminations and mediation.