Hey you--you with the increasingly rare opportunity to hire someone to work for you. These are tough economic times. Lots of people are looking for work, and you hold all the cards. That may feel good, but the people who are applying for those jobs do not feel so good, so this is an invitation to avoid the opportunity to exploit your hiring situation and, instead, treat applicants with compassion and dignity. You stand to gain from that, too.
Here are some tips:
First, understand that $10/hour is not a living wage for full-time work, much less for the part-time hours so many workers are offered. If you must offer a worker that kind of wage and limited hours, at least offer a predictable schedule so that she can find another part-time job. If you don't, you will likely find that no sooner have you invested in her training, she will leave, either for a full-time job or to move back in with her parents who live in another city.
Second, don't waste your time or the applicant's time with ads that are vague, misrepresent the job responsibilities, or fail to mention the salary. Don't ask people to spend their afternoon waiting in line for an "open call" so that you don't have to bother sorting through applications. Don't ask people to interview for a job, then, at the interview, explain that job doesn't exist, but you have another one that sucks more.
Don't waste your time or that of your applicants by interviewing them without first checking their references. Don't ask people to come back for multiple interviews with various supervisors for an entry-level job--trust me, you look like a company that has too many supervisors, none of whom can be trusted to make a decision.
Think carefully about the skills you actually need before crafting your job description. I see dozens of ads for jobs that require 5-7 years of like experience. Keep in mind, our country has hired a president with less experience than that. If you are having brain surgery at a top metropolitan hospital, the doctor wielding the scalpel probably has less on-the-job experience than you are requiring of your web content manager or lead cook. (And do you really want the employee who needed 7 years to learn the job or the employee who only needed 2 years?)
If your defense for these hiring procedures is that you have been burned by poor hires, ask yourself whether the problem is the new hires or the management team that can't effectively assess talent or train new workers. If your work place needs entry level workers to be so skilled that they are not actually entry level, your middle management needs to be improved. But chances are, the managers who are hiring came from the pool of workers who needed 5-7 years on the job before they gained competence.
If you are doing the hiring, and you don't know these things, learn fast, or you may find yourself learning them from the other side of the desk.