Whether you are looking to hire your first employee or your 100th, if you are ramping up and needing to hire a quality workforce, here are five strategies to successful hiring:
1 – Get Clear On What You Need
Taking the time to clearly define what your actual talent needs are will save you future money and time by avoiding the pitfalls of hiring for the wrong positions.
“Clarity of vision is the key to achieving your objectives.” – Tom Steyer
You may be ready to launch a new product and have just hired the greatest customer service representative for your company to handle all the new customer questions and inquiries you’re anticipating. Great! BUT as you launch the product, you have to do some quality testing first… so if the immediate job need for your company is actually in quality testing, and you really need a quality assurance professional, your customer service rep isn’t likely going to fit the bill.
While scaling your business, the people that work for you and represent your company contribute greatly to your success. But before you continue hiring more people, make sure you think about what those people will actually be doing on a day to day, or hour to hour basis. You’ve just rolled out a new product and now you think you need a team of customer service agents working around the clock to answer customer questions. But do you really? Are customers really calling your company 24/7, or does it seem urgent when you receive an after hours call? Perhaps you need a “Frequently Asked Questions” section on your website with a chat function monitored by one or two high quality customer service representatives working normal business hours.
Growth and scaling can affect the budget in an even bigger way at the officer level of the company. Say your CEO retires or leaves for reason, and your CFO or COO is promoted into the CEO position. Don’t jump to fill the vacated CFO or COO position. Take a careful look at the skills of the officers as a collective. What are each leader’s strongest skills and greatest opportunities? All too often, companies will promote from within, then immediately fill the vacated position without an assessment of skills, only to end up with two people with the same skill set, duplicating efforts, or worse yet, arguing over whose methods are better. If your new CEO is great at the financial figures and data analysis, don’t jump to hiring another CFO, but rather look at what is missing, and hire for the desired skills. Do you need a visionary CFO that can translate the financials into big ideas? Do you need a CFO savvy with numbers and people who can talk the talk with investors? Before jumping to hire a vacant leadership position (or any position for that matter) take the time to assess what you truly need – it will save you big bucks on future HR expenses!
Taking the time to identify your company’s true staffing needs is paramount to scaling your business on a budget.
2 – Get Real in your job posting
Be honest about who you are and why a great candidate should work for you. Don’t just copy and paste an industry peer’s job announcement and think it will lead to a great hire for you. Every company is unique and special – and much of that has to do with the people that work there and the office culture that is developed by those people. If you have a dog friendly office, where people are encouraged to bring their dogs, then advertise that as a perk! If you incentivize employees to stay healthy by providing only healthy food in the kitchen, then advertise that. If your company’s workplace has core values or “game rule” for the work environment, think about including those in your announcement. The more real you can be in the job posting, the more likely you’ll be to receive candidates that will be a great match for the position both in skill and personality. Hiring once for a position is a lot more economical than making bad hires and repeating the process over and over.
3 – Get to the point of what you really NEED to know
There are so many creative interview questions out there, but do they really provide the information you need to make a successful hire?
How is the person you are today consistent or consistent with your 12 year old self?
What is your spirit animal?
Who do you wish you could have dinner with?
These are fun questions – sometimes called silver bullet questions – that often put candidates on the spot for coming up with clever, impressive answers. But is that really a goal you are trying to accomplish during the interview? If you care that your employees are witty and able to come up with clever answers to outlandish questions, then by all means, ask away. More likely, the purpose of the interview is to see if the candidate truly possess the skills, experience and personality that will make them a good fit for your company.
Ask questions that will lead to conversations about why the candidate wants your job – not just any job, but YOUR job. Why are they interested in your company? What can they offer your company as an employee that you maybe haven’t thought of? What about them will make them a good personality fit for your office culture?
Some of the most successful interviews evolve organically into interesting conversations. Let go of the written questions, and talk. You’ll likely learn more about your candidate’s skills and personality without being restrained to asking specific interview questions.
4 – Don’t go it alone
Use a team, or better yet, hire a professional firm like Salt Lake Staffing that specializes in the exact workforce you are seeking. Professional firms like Salt Lake Staffing have a solid network of skilled candidates looking to make a great match with the right company. Salt Lake Staffing specializes in tech industry jobs, so we can target the greatest candidates for your industry-specific positions. These people are looking for companies like yours to work for – they have skills and experience, and now they need to find the right cultural fit and a great tech company.
Working with Salt Lake Staffing is a cost effective way of finding great candidates. When you hire us, we’ll spend our time recruiting, screening applications and interviewing candidates so that you can spend your time scaling your business. You’ll save hours of time, and you’ll save money in the long run, as Salt Lake Staffing will find you the best candidates to match your positions.
5 – Would you take the job?
Finally – be fair with what you offer candidates as you create new position, or add to existing positions. Offer a fair compensation package. Would you take the job for what you are offering? Compensation can include a variety of things in addition to salary and basic benefits, such as vacation time, employee wellness programs, pet friendly environments, onsite child care, the possibilities are endless. So offer what you would want. Offer what would keep you loyal to your company. If your employees are well compensated, they’ll be less likely to move on to other opportunities – saving you money in the long run by eliminating HR expenses related to constantly searching for employees.
Scaling your business on a budget is possible. It all comes down to the effort you put into identifying 1) What you need 2) Who you are 3) What you need to learn from the interview 4) Getting great professional help finding awesome candidates and 5) Offering a job you would want to take yourself!
Call Salt Lake Staffing today, and let us help you through this process, and match you with the greatest candidates in the Salt Lake area today!
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