As a business owner, the types of employees you hire determine, to a great extent, how far your business goes. While a great employee can ‘make’ your business and bring about improvements, a bad egg can break your business, too. Hence, one needs to be very realistic and careful when choosing an employee. However, the process of selecting the right staff from a pool of talents can seem challenging or, at the very least, unnecessarily tedious. With loads of prospective applicants convincing you about their abilities and many proving to you that they fit the bill, things can get complicated quickly, especially if you don’t know how to accurately discern between a very good applicant and a perfect prospective employee who ticks all your boxes. So, how do you go about it? Well, here are some tricks and tips to get you started. So, shall we?
Look for someone with a commitment to their career
Guess what; beyond the reality of talents and skills, a person committed to his or her career is the candidate you have to hire. Hence, before proceeding with your selection, be sure to read in between the lines of your interactions with applicants. Look to see whether a person has been changing jobs frequently, just so he could get a higher salary, or he has been very committed to his career. You don’t want to hire someone – who probably has all the abilities you need – only for them to show up and tell you they are moving on after a few months of working with you.
Test skills
As a business owner, the onus is on you to devise means to test the analytical and learning skills of your candidates. Don’t just base your evaluation on confidence level and resume because a resume can contain lies. A very confident candidate, whose resume looks pretty catchy, is indeed a great option worthy of consideration, but what you genuinely want is a candidate that possesses the skills you need. If you cannot conduct the necessary tests, be sure to hire an agency that does. That way, you are confident about the skill-set and abilities of those you are hiring.
Check compatibility
Before hiring an employee, ensure you check whether he or she fits the bill of compatibility. You want to hire an employee that will fit in with your company’s standards, values, and culture. Check whether or not the candidate has got excellent social skills to get along with clients and colleagues alike. Hiring the right employee isn’t just about academic skills, abilities, and resume, you also need to check the social history of the candidate, to be sure he or she has got the right social skills. You don’t want to hire someone only for them to come to create intra-organizational rifts within your business or chase potential clients away with their sadistic behaviors.
Keep improving your hiring process
When you are looking for potential candidates to add to your business or build your start-up, the hiring process is the first and foremost factor you need to focus on. Make sure you follow these steps in your hiring process:
- Instead of asking those magic bullet questions or irrelevant questions, always focus on getting to know the knowledge, capabilities, attitude, skills, confidence, and potential of the candidate.
- Regardless of whether you are using an agency – such as a professional temp staffing agency – to hire employees or you are executing in-house vacancy adverts, always make sure that all the job requirements such as responsibilities, experience, required skills, and education are clearly stated. It will help you in evaluating applicants and attracting applicants that tick all the boxes you’ve specified.
- Do not limit the evaluation process to just one person; instead, be sure to involve other relevant people in the process, since more opinions can help in identifying the right person.
Check their motivation
Before choosing a candidate for a position in your business, always try to find out what their motivation truly is. Are they interested in the position because of the huge pay? Or are they really vested in advancing their careers with your business? Do they see your job as the perfect fit for them, or is it just a stepping stone?
Do not forget to hire interns
Like it or not, this is one of the best ways to find the right employee for your business. When you hire an intern, you are partly responsible for their training and development, which means that you know all about their weaknesses, knowledge level, skills, attitudes, and what have you. For the period of their internship, you can mold and shape them into the kinds of employees you may want in the nearest future. So, instead of going out to search for the right employee, why not look to see which of your interns fit the bill? If you’ve been in the habit of hiring interns and training them properly, you are sure going to find at least a few of them ready to take the positions you are looking to fill.
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