An incredible amount of time is spent in the hiring process to: advertise, review resumes, interview candidates, interview final candidates, negotiate terms, hire, complete intake interview. And that is just the beginning of the investment your company makes in the employment of a new team member. Now that you've hired them you begin the process that often takes months to get them well trained and functioning in the position.
This places a huge value on Hiring the Right person for the job.
There is no perfect way to complete the process that will guarantee they will be a successful long term addition, but there are some important steps you can implement that will improve your odds.
Advertise: Make the content of your job posting ad as factual and detailed as possible and have thorough details of the job duties and the must have and want to have skills and personalities you are searching for. Be bold in clearly stating the must have skills and qualities vs. the want to haves; separating this out will make it very easy to sort through the resumes. And be sure your must haves are truly not negotiable!
Resumes: On the first review of each resume look for these two ways to Eliminate candidates: 1) The match of your Must Haves. If any are missing eliminate this resume. (see last comment about Advertise above - if your Must Haves are truly not negotiable than it should feel easy for you to eliminate a resume that does not include ALL Must Haves). 2) Job Hopping. Odds are if the candidate has changed jobs more frequently than once every 2 years averaged, then that pattern will continue. Based on the fact that you spend all the time and money to find, hire, and train them you want to see a pattern of longer than 2 years averaged terms.
Interview: Spend a little time reviewing their employment history with them and a lot of time examining their potential: do they seem to be flexible; a quick learner; socially capable; feels that they will fit in with their peer team; does their personality fit the job requirements. These questions are good to include because they help you learn things that reflect on who they are as a person: Who will you be in 10 years from now? What do you do for fun? Why do you work? What makes you the most excited to get up in the morning? And give them an opportunity to ask you questions, to interview you about the company and the job. Take very thorough notes!
Eliminate again and create a short list, prefer no more than 4, for a final interview process. Use other team members for the final interview process either in a group setting, or individually, whichever fits your company personality best. This can be modeled off of the first interview questions with a few changes as you find best for this particular job. Share your notes from the initial interview with the other interviewers so they can prepare customized question sets for each individual candidate. Have each interviewer take very thorough notes! Quite often by the time the 2nd interviews are complete there will be a natural forerunner that has the right aptitude, attitude, skills, and personality for the job.
Check References! Check Their Social Media Pages! Search them on the Web! Investigate as thoroughly as you can!
Remember, there are no perfect solutions that insure an employee will be a great fit and will have longevity with the company, so don't expect perfection and don't get discouraged. Just use a thorough and informed process and you will greatly improve your odds at hiring and retaining high quality team members.