No matter what type of business you have, it’s very important to hire the right employees that can help you run your business. Every business manager and owner wants to hire successful employees who are going to help their business grow. By finding the right employees, not only can you tap into their knowledge base, but you can hire people who are going to have the skills and traits that you need to help your company thrive.
Consider these key tips to help you find employees based on their resumes and cover letters, and even their past performance. That way you can focus on finding employees that will be the right fit for your company and hiring needs:
1) Streamline Your Hiring Ads
Start with deciding on the types of advertising you want to use to find your new employee. If you go to sites like LinkedIn, and you are not specific with the skill sets you’re seeking, you may find that if you send out one job offer you may be hit with more than 3,000 resumes. This can be very overwhelming for an office manager who has to sort through resumes one by one. To help you narrow your candidate selection, you may want to focus on particular skills and include factors such as college graduate, past experience, and even relevant experience. Forbes confirms that streamlining applicant qualifications can minimize what can sometimes prove to be an arduous task.
2) Consider Social Relationships
When you get ready to interview a potential employee if you find that they are not making eye contact with you or they’re only giving you brief answers to questions, they may be social introverts. This can work well if you are hiring for projects that require minimal supervision, but if you need them to be a team player, they may not be the best fit for your particular environment.
The adverse can also be said if you hire someone who is too chatty because they may prove too distracting to your team. You want to try to find the right balance of social intelligence to help compliment your groups on team projects —as well as solo projects.
3) Do a Social Media Search
We can’t stress this enough because while a resume and cover letter are geared to give you the highlights and the best attributes the person has to offer, if you actually want to be able to see them in a natural setting, check their Facebook page, Twitter and Instagram accounts. If you find that you see lots of negative comments or pictures of them drunk every night, or if there are a lot of negative comments about past employers, then you definitely may want to take your hiring needs elsewhere.
Mind Tools suggests that former and current athletes make great team players because they’re used to social dynamics. As each office setting is different, you may have to factor in what the specific needs are for your company or firm.
4) Find a Personality Fit
While not every company is going to set up a potential employee with a Myers-Briggs test, you may want to ask specific questions about how the person will react in different settings or set up your own type of testing questions to better understand whether or not they are an introvert, extrovert, judgmental, sensitive, or other personality type that could be a factor in your office setting on a day-to-day basis.
5) Get Details
While you have your potential candidate in an interview, you do want to strategize your questions based on the responses they give. If they were fired from their last company, you may want to turn your attention to this with further exploratory questions. If they give brief answers and won’t elaborate, they might be trying to hide something. Another indication is if they try to quickly change the subject.
6) Ask Strategic Questions
You may want to ask your potential employee about where they want to work, where they see themselves in five to ten years and also what their typical routine is for getting up in the morning and what they do on weekends. The more you let them talk on their own, the more insight they will give into their personality type. You may find that they spend weekends volunteering at a shelter which says a lot, but if they have a part-time business or that they are in school, you may want to have them elaborate on how much time they spend on outside interests to confirm they won’t interfere with work obligations.
7) Anticipate Their Questions
Your potential employee should ask specific questions about the job site, the type of work they will be doing and maybe their coworkers. If they don’t ask questions, they may not be interested in the position itself and may just be looking for a salary.
Also look for the potential employee to tell you what they know about your company based on their research prior to the interview. Undercover Recruiter states that this is the biggest mistake potential employees make. If they don’t bring it up ask them what they know about your business to see if they did their homework.
8) Be Transparent about Their Responsibilities
If there’s a lot of heavy lifting involved, long hours or difficult personalities and an extremely stressful environment, make sure you indicate this in the interview. You want to establish that the employee will be required to handle this type of work environment. You may also want to have them look at a breakdown of all of their tasks and responsibilities and sign off on it to ensure that they understand the job requirements.
9) Factor in Your Other Employee’s Personality Types
If you know that your other employees are great with team dynamics, and they’re looking for someone to join their team, you may not want to hire that social introvert because they’re not going to fit in. If on the other hand you’re looking for someone who can stagnate schedules and will serve as backup support when your team leaves the office, then this person may fit in perfectly.
10) Let Your Employees Interview the Candidate
If you’re unsure about how you want to proceed, let your employees meet with the person and interview them. If you find that your employees are expressing a disinterest in the person or find reasons why they don’t think they would be a good fit, you may want to turn your attentions elsewhere.
As you use these key tips to help you to find the right employee, remember it’s going to be a combination of finding a good fit, checking into the person’s background, and also seeing how they relate in social and team settings. Don’t be afraid to bring your employees in to interview with the candidates you’ve selected so they can help you narrow down your search and hire the person who will work best with your firm or company.
