Insight Global’s Complete Guide to Hiring in 2025

Hiring employees isn’t just about filling seats and adding to your headcount—the team you build will impact your organization’s success in the long run! Thus, you should think about hiring through a long-term lens.

This starts with knowing what kind of person you want to add to your team. Hiring based on skill set is common (and necessary), but you also want to think about fit, professional development, and where you want your team to be years from now. With this mindset, you start to proactively hire rather than reactively hire.

So before we get into the nitty gritty of the hiring process, we encourage you to think about the kind of person your team and organization needs.

• What type of employee thrives at your company? 
• What gaps do you need to fill? What about five years from now? 
• Do you need someone to transform the way the team works with a new perspective, or do you need someone to fit in? 

Now, while the initial decision to hire should be driven by the organization’s strategic needs, the selection of the right hire also hinges on their ability to drive the existing team dynamic forward. By carefully weighing both factors, employers can ensure that new hires contribute effectively to both the company’s bottom line and its overall culture.

Knowing how to hire employees will set your business up for long-term success.

Once you know what kind of new hire you need, it’s time to prioritize that hire.

That’s how important it is.

But it’s not just dropping everything and starting the process. Some things you need to plan and think through to make sure your new hire is adding value include a mix of measurable need-to-haves and culture-based considerations: 

• KPIs: What key performance indicators—whether focusing on productivity, performance, or quality of work—does your new hire need to hit? 
• Soft skills: Some technical skills will be necessary for the role. What soft skills does the new hire need to success? 
• Culture fit vs. add vs. driver: A good team culture will drive results. Do you need someone who fits your culture, adds to it, or drives it forward? We discuss the differences in the guide. 
• Budget: Has budget been approved for the hire? 
• Stakeholder approval: You typically can’t hire until the necessary stakeholders approve it. Within the guide, we walk through how to get that approval. 
• Hiring timeline: A hiring timeline will add clarity, efficiency, and a measure goal to improve against. 

You may have other factors you need to consider before jumping into the process of finding and assessing talent. What are some value-adding considerations you need to prioritize in the hiring process?

Now it’s time to find talent, assess their fit for the role, and make a decision. This part of the hiring process includes everything you typically think of with the hiring process, from crafting a great job description to making a job offer. We’ve got tips and strategies to enhance how you execute this part, too!

These include:

• Making sure your job description and job requisition are fully aligned with your company’s needs and goals. Clearly defining the job details with a well-written job description will make it easier to advocate for team expansion within your job requisition. 
• Setting job expectations in the job description. 
• Determining a candidate profile that focuses only on must-haves. If you narrow your candidate pool too much with a laundry list of necessary qualities, you can miss out on diverse, premium candidates that may offer more than you expected. 
• Aligning your team on their roles in the hiring process and setting clear expectations of who is involved in the decision-making process. 
• Conducting really great interviews with transparency and effectiveness. This includes asking great behavioral interview questions to help you find the candidate that best fits your candidate profile. 
• Making a job offer that level-sets expectations and clearly defines what the role is.
• Staying connected with candidates between the job offer and start date. 

Candidates crave answers—it’s only natural they’ll be looking for them throughout the hiring process. But be transparent about the timeline—the one you created earlier in the hiring process.

But then, it’s time to onboard your new hire!

Retention and productivity are typically two goals of any talent acquisition team. When you hire someone, it’s usually with the intention of getting them productive quickly, then retaining that employee and helping them grow within your organization.

This starts at onboarding.

Did you know that 71% of employees want their employers to perform a “re-onboarding”? This highlights that onboarding can always be an area where organizations can continuously improve.

There’s always room to improve in the three phases of onboarding: administrative (paperwork, benefits, etc.), technical (skills and tools they need to learn), and cultural (integrating into the team and organization).

Once your new hire is onboarded, though, it’s time to focus on retaining them.

Company culture and a lack of engagement are often the primary reason an employee leaves.“Culture is the most powerful force of an organization, but often very misunderstood,” Tim Kuppler, Director of Compass, Insight Global

Consider some of the following questions when looking to improve in this area: 

• What are some must-haves for enhancing and driving your company culture? 
• What are some actions you and your team can take to connect your new hire to your team/company culture?
• What do you need your new employee to accomplish in their first three months? How will they accomplish that? How will you measure success and communicate this plan with them?

Then, as the new hire gets comfortable in their job, there are plenty of ways for them to grow and develop.But then, it’s time to onboard your new hire!