Several years ago a colleague told me, “When it comes to employees you have to hire slowly and fire quickly.”
When making hiring decisions we believe this to be generally true. A hiring mistake can have dire consequences not just for the job at hand, but for the culture of the company, their reputation, and the costs associated with on-boarding and training someone who doesn’t work out.
This is why the effort to hire well is so important. In this article we will give you three tips to making sure your next hire is a home run.
Tip #1 – Write Better Ads
The first tip is to simply write better ads to attract the right kind of employee. Conversely, your ad should work to repel the wrong type of employee. If you are looking for someone who has a particular type of degree for example, that obviously needs to be in the ad itself or you risk applicants who are not qualified.
This isn’t always so cut and dry. Vague hyperbole such as “detail oriented” may not tell the job seeker much since a lot of people may consider themselves detail oriented when in reality they are not. Instead give very specific instructions on how to apply and look carefully at whether your potential candidates followed those instructions or not.
Tip #2 – Ask Specific, Open-Ended Questions
The best candidates are going to have specific anecdotes about how they solved a particular problem or met a specific goal. During the interview process make sure you are asking pointed questions that reveal their skill set.
“Tell me about a time you defused an angry customer situation at your previous job” or “What are some of the specific things you did to increase revenue (or decrease costs or improve customer satisfaction, etc)” are much better than close-ended questions like “Are you good at customer service?”
Tip #3 – Hire for Culture as Well as Skill Sets
This final tip may be the most important. Hiring a new employee is a lot like bringing in a new member to a family. You want to make sure that their values, work ethic, and attitude will be a good fit for the company as a whole.
The person may be highly skilled and talented, but if they are a complete jerk or lazy then it won’t be a good fit no matter their skills.
Hiring is one of the most difficult jobs in the workforce. These tips should help make your next hire a winner.
