 Your co-operative needs to attract and recruit the best people to ensure its success. Recruitment is more than just a job advert, it's about deciding what your business needs, finding the right person, checking out their credentials and getting a contract in place. Stage 1 What are your staffing options? Well recruiting an employee is one way, but there are other options which may suit your business better. The benefit of employing someone is that you will have more control over what that person does, when and how. You can ask someone to work full-time or part-time to fit in with the needs of your company. The downside is that employment can be expensive. You'll need to pay at least the national minimum wage, employers national insurance contributions, as well as paid leave and sick pay. Over the next few years, all employers will have to provide a pension scheme. Employees are protected from discrimination and have the right to claim unfair dismissal after two years. Next, what about hiring someone who is self-employed? This person supplies their services and charges you a fee. Self-employed individuals don't have the right to the payments we talked about earlier and you won't need to pay national insurance. Take care. If you want this person to perform the work themselves, provide them with the equipment, can tell them what to do, where and when, then this may be employment. Visit the HMRC website for more information. Another option is to use a recruitment agency. This is where you tell the agency what you need and they supply workers that fit your requirements. You direct the individuals on a day-to-day basis. But it is the agency that is responsible for sorting out everything else. The only issue is that this can be expensive because you pay the agency a fee for their services. From your auntie to the nice man that lives at the end of the road, often you need all the help you can get when starting a business. Volunteers are not paid except for their expenses and cannot be required to work. There are six steps in the recruitment process. Putting together a job description, advertising the job vacancy, interviewing the candidates who meet your criteria, selecting the successful candidate, carrying out pre-employment checks, getting an employment contract in place. If you decide you want to take on an employee, the next stage is to decide what it is that this person is going to be doing. Write a list of the essential tasks that your new recruits will be performing. To be able to perform those tasks, will your recruits need certain skills, qualifications, knowledge or abilities? Now write another list. You've just created a job description. Job descriptions are used by businesses to tell candidates what skills they are looking for. You will use the job description as the basis for interviewing and choosing your employee. Here are some tips for writing job descriptions. It is against the law to discriminate during the recruitment process against anyone on one of the grounds listed here. Is your job title gender neutral? Here are some examples of gender-specific job titles. If you are looking for a stuntman, advertise for a stuntman or stuntwoman or use a non-gender description such as Stunt Performer. Think about whether you could offer a job on a part-time or job share basis. Also, take care of words which may be discriminatory. Shop girl or shop boy may suggest you are looking for a younger worker. Take care using words such as youthful, active or mature. Make sure that all the tasks and skills included in your job description are actually what you need. For example, don't say that the candidate needs to have a driving licence if the person will never be expected to travel. If you do, you could be discriminating against someone who is unable to drive because of their disability. Pay. If you are not sure at this stage what to pay, don't make up a figure as you could be held to this figure. Perhaps say that the pay is negotiable or you offer competitive rates. Advertising the role. The job advert needs to sell your organisation and the role. There are a few options including the job centre, your website, job board, advertising your shop window, using social media, in a newspaper or using a recruitment agency. Employers should be prepared to provide a job advertisement in a different format if a disabled job applicant requires it. For example, a visually impaired employee may request that a job application is provided in Braille. How will the candidates apply for your job? You could ask candidates to send their CV or fill in an application form. Generally, it's not acceptable to ask candidates to provide a photograph of themselves. You can ask on the application form whether the applicant has previous convictions but you are not entitled to ask the applicant to reveal spent conviction. It is good practice to ask all applicants to indicate whether they are likely to need any reasonable adjustments at interview. That way you can contact them to discuss their requirement. The law says that you must make reasonable adjustments to the recruitment process to prevent a disabled person being disadvantaged. Here are some examples. What is reasonable depends on the circumstances of your business. Stage five, interviews. Write a list of questions that you want to ask your candidates based on the job description. It is illegal to ask people about their health before you offer them a role. This includes previous levels of sickness absence. The exception to this is asking someone whether they need any adjustments to the recruitment process or collecting diversity information. Remember to keep the interview related to the job description and avoid questions which could be seen as discriminatory. Selection. Hopefully there is someone that you want to employ from the applications you received. You can again use a simple scoring matrix to help you decide who you want to employ. The job offer. This could be the employment contract itself or it could be an offer which is written in a separate letter to the contract. You are likely to want to see references and will definitely need to ensure that the person you are about to employ has the right to work in the UK. Make your offer conditional upon satisfactory references and providing satisfactory evidence of right to work in the UK. Obtaining references before employment is essential. If the references reveal issues, you then have the opportunity not to continue with employment. It is against the law to employ anyone who does not have the right to work in the UK. You will need to obtain a copy of your prospective employee's ID documents which evidence their ability to work in the UK before employment starts. If you employ someone who is working illegally in the UK and fail to carry out these checks, you could be fined up to £20,000 or face a prison sentence. For further information, go to www.gov.uk. If the job is to work with children or vulnerable adults within their role, you may need to use the disclosure and barring service to certify their ability to undertake that type of work. Get advice if you have concerns. You'll need to issue your employee with a written employment contract or a written statement of their terms and conditions. It is a requirement that your contract sets out basic terms such as data protection. During the recruitment process, you'll have collected a lot of personal data from the job applicants. Make sure you store this information securely. OK, so there you have the basics of recruitment. Watch our other videos to find out more about how to employ staff.