Here’s a motto every small business should live buy: Hasty hiring brings frequent firing. For most business owners, the hiring “process” includes posting a job opening, sorting resumes and hiring the first person who makes a good impression.
But the consequences of poor choices can be severe. If you keep an unproductive person on, you’re damaging your business. But when you fire someone you face administrative costs, possible severance pay and maybe unemployment compensation. Then you’ll have to pay to attract and train a new candidate. Meanwhile, you pay others overtime to take up the slack.
Here are five tactics that will save you time and help you find perfect hires more quickly:
• Look for an ability to be faithful in the little things. When it comes to making great hiring choices, no detail is too small. How well a person performs on little things is indicative of how well they’ll perform on big ones.
• Make sure the candidate has the basic ability to do the job. In addition to making sure that candidates communicate clearly and respectfully, your task is to ensure they can fulfill the core, nonnegotiable requirements of the position.
• Let them do the talking: It’s an interview, not a monologue. Many business owners try to put job candidates at ease by doing most of the talking and spending much of the interview telling the candidate about the company. Your job as leader, however, is to assess an applicant’s character and competency. Don’t be intimidating or overbearing, but keep in mind that your goal is to evaluate the prospect’s accomplishments, because past performance is far more telling than past experience.
• Consider their journey, not just their current location. Don’t judge applicants strictly by the career “level” they’ve reached. Dig deeper to determine how they got to where they are. You may be surprised at what you find. Some people are given a generous head start in life, while others have been forced to navigate many obstacles. These candidates may have faced the kinds of challenges that can forge greater strength of character and persistence.
• Share your core values before hiring. The objective of the knockout interview formula is to find a reason to say “no” to a job candidate. By sharing your core values with applicants, you may find that some knock themselves out for you. Describe your organization’s core values and behavioral expectations before extending an offer. Let applicants know that you have non-negotiable standards for integrity, teamwork, attitude and attention to detail. •
Daniel Kehrer can be reached at
editor@bizbest.com.
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