Maybe your key person resigned, maybe your business is growing rapidly and to keep up, you need to grow your team; small businesses often don’t have the resources or time to spend on candidate screening and hiring process. This leads to quick and ineffective hiring. In today’s marketplace, it is crucial to find an effective way to assess and retain top talent, which benefits both the business and deserving job seekers. It Is highly important that companies go above and beyond traditional resumes and interviews to find worthy employees.
As a business owner, ideally, you’d want a person who has a good cultural fit, possesses the appropriate job skills and someone who will get up to speed as soon as possible. Here are some principles your business can use for effective hiring;
Develop company-wide qualifications
Usually, job descriptions consist of specific hard skills that are required to get the job done. However, companies should be creating qualifications that will allow excellent work company-wide.
Google is a well-known company that practices this. They have five qualifications that are listed as part of the job description, including the ability to learn, the humility of accepting that another person’s idea is better and in the end, the actual expertise required for the job.
You can do this by looking into your current employees and work culture. Examine your best employees and see what makes them productive. What makes them add to their personal growth and the overall growth of the company?
Consider cultural fit
Something that isn’t commonly considered when hiring new employees, despite it being a critical factor for your company’s growth. While it is crucial to make sure a new employee fits well with your company’s cultural work values, it is equally crucial not to confuse your business’s culture with implicit cultural biases.
Some things to look out for in terms of company culture would be:
If your company prides itself on transparency, look for someone who values openness and takes in criticism.
If your company ensures customers’ and clients’ concerns are put on the forefront, look for someone who remains empathetic to the customer’s experience.
If your company values innovative thinking, look for someone who is creative and has the skills to think beyond traditional answers.
If your company values optimism and positive thinking, look for someone who believes the glass is always half full.
Understand what your vacancy requires
Each job requires some hard skills and soft skills, among other generic company-wide skills. It is crucial you look deeper into the right sort of skills required to carry out the role to prevent having ineligible candidates from submitting resumes. Speak to other business owners in similar industries to gain insight into the requirements of the role. To find the best fit for your company, understanding what the role needs and creating an appropriate job description is key.
Build a Hiring Pipeline
Working together with recruiters, attending networking events and job fairs is a great way to create a strong hiring pipeline. This allows you to have potential hires on hand and when you need them most, you can quickly fill the vacancy.
Dave Young, owner of Flex-Ability Concepts and a The Alternative Board member since 2011, says, “Hiring should not be an event spurred by employee turnover; it should be an ongoing practice that protects a business and allows it to grow.”