One of the critical parts of outsourcing is selecting who to hire. At GrabContent, we get 50-70 applicants for a single job posting. It’s important to decide up front what is important to your business. Doing so will set you up for finding the best match as well as help you avoid wasting precious time.

Before you even fire up the computer, decide on the 3-5 most important attributes of a successful worker in your business. You will attract better matches when your job listing describes what is important in a new recruit. It will also help make filtering through all the applicants significantly easier.

Especially in today’s economy, you’ll no doubt have a lot of people respond to your job opportunity. You need to remember all along the way the things that matter most to your business. One of the things that is important for us is that our writers pay extremely close attention to detail. When we create a job listing, we state in the first sentence that that’s what we’re looking for. Then we proceed to state the exact steps that they need to take to be considered. It always surprises me at how many people don’t follow our directions, even when we’ve stated in the first sentence that we won’t consider anybody who doesn’t follow all the directions. Because we embed a test into the application process, we’re able to weed out in just a matter of seconds about 80% of the applicants.

Be up front with your applicants. For me this means highlighting the advantages of working with your company as well as disclosing the significant disadvantages. Although some might not agree, I like to state a salary range directly in the job posting and outline what it takes to get raises. Sure, this gives the other person a slight advantage in negotiations, but it also reduces the time spent on back-and-forth on every project. This will allow you both to spend more time on what matters most–your product.