Recruiting for a new member of staff is not easy and can very time consuming. It’s important to select the right candidate for the business as well as one with the right cultural fit. Pressures on time mean that it can be tempting for pharmacy owners to cut corners when recruiting, but it rarely pays off in the long run.  These are some of the most common (and fairly easily avoided) mistakes.

1. Not using the “Behavioural Interview” format

Behavioural Interview Technique” will benefit your decision as to which staff to hire.  Behavioural interviewing is a technique employed by interviewers to evaluate past behaviour in order to predict future behaviour in a particular situation. And it’s done through a series of specific questions.

Example questions:

• Tell me about a time when you had to implement a team project that involved a dispensary technician or front of shop staff?
• Tell me some ways in which you helped your previous employer’s business grow?
• Do you prefer to stand behind the dispensary and counter and concentrate on scripts or do you prefer spending time with the patient/customer?

2. Not Listening

Sometimes it’s easy to fall into the trap of ‘doing most of the talking’. Listen intently to what your candidate is saying; get to know them as much as you can. Ask open-ended, accomplishment-oriented questions.

3. Fail to create a ‘scorecard’ for the interview

Before the first interview takes place, create an interview scorecard that lists the key accomplishments and skills you want in the person you hire. You might have 7 criteria (sales skills, organisational skills, certain dispense systems, etc.) for which you score the candidate from 1-5. This helps you to grade every candidate objectively against criteria that are important for the job.

4. Not recruiting for a cultural fit

While no pharmacy owner wants all employees to think and behave the same way, it is important that any new members of staff fit in with the rest of their team.  Their personality has to mesh with others. If the team doesn’t get along, it is immediately ‘sensed’ by customers.

5. Waiting for the perfect candidate

A candidate-rich market can leave organisations paralysed by choice, as they reason that there must be a jobseeker out there that matches every requirement on their list and they only have to find them.

In reality, perfect candidates are so rare that it is usually best to go for someone who meets all of the key requirements and can be trained in the “would-like-to-haves”.  Training up a candidate builds loyalty and productivity, and they might have other qualities that could come in useful in the future.

LocumCo helps you select the right candidates in a fraction of the time it would take you to do it yourself. We thoroughly check the references and credentials of each candidate before recommending a candidate to you.