Do You Hire the Right People?

Based upon feedback from last week’s newsletter this week’s article will be about hiring the right people.

The topic of how to hire right for your business is an issue with great concern to all businesses. No matter the size of your business, hiring the right people is a very important asset.

The first step you should take is to create a job description which is as accurate as possible and defines the required skills and experience necessary to be successful in the position. If you are as detailed as possible there are no surprises later on. These requirements and experiences are the minimum. You might consider adding the highly favored category of experience and education in another section.

This is a critical step which each person in the hiring process must contribute to and agree with the final version. One reason for this process is anyone who does not meet the minimum requirements and experiences is an applicant which is not being looked at in any way for the role. You may invite them to apply for another role or position or not.

The next step is to understand your budget range for the position. This budget range should be agreed to by each person involved in the hiring process.

After these two steps, the list of candidates should be reviewed and go through the first round of vetting. Once you have a short list created you might be inclined to bring people for rounds of interviews in person. There is one important step before conducting the interviews.

An excellent tool to consider, in order to hire right, before the in-person rounds of interviews start, is to conduct an assessment in advance. There are a number of quality online assessments which will assist you in seeing how the candidate may be a fit into the culture of the company. The larger the organization the more formalized this process may become in terms of the arrangement with the assessment tool utilization, and having access in house the skilled and certified personnel to understand the results of the assessment.  For a smaller business the use of these tools will dramatically assist in determining fit before an in person interview takes place.

One of the most important aspects of hiring the right people is the ability to conduct a proper interview. This is an acquired skill. It would be worthy of a book or at the very least an article on interviewing skills. One key advice is to let the applicant do most of the talking. You can learn a lot just by listening. For the moment, anyone who will be interviewing must understand the laws around interview questions which are not permitted.

Another important contributor to hiring right is the request for recommendations and then actually following up and speaking with each person on the submitted list. Speak on the phone versus an email exchange. You can hear a lot more from someone’s voice.

In summary, follow these tips in order to hire right for your business:

• job description
• range of budget
• initial vetting
• assessment tools
• interview skills
• contact recommendations

Mitch Tublin is an advanced certified executive and personal coach who resides in Stamford, CT.