In order for small businesses to succeed, they have to have solid employees to build upon their foundation. But, sometimes finding great employees can be difficult. These guidelines should ensure your hiring process will continue to add top notch personnel to your team. Using this recruiting process will help you find and hire capable and strong people. Those strong people will, in turn, raise the bar for your existing employees and create a more productive workplace.
Chart 1 displays each step to the hiring process. However, if you look at Chart 2, you can see those same steps, but in order of importance.
As you can see the most important step and the first step are not the same. Most business owners believe that the most important step is the INTERVIEW, some will tell you TESTING, and others will say that the SEARCH is number one. Unfortunately, none of those are the most critical step of the process. Let’s take a closer look at the two most important steps and the least important step to more clearly understand their value.
IDENTIFY – This part of the hiring process is where you clearly identify the attributes and experiences of the ideal candidate. If you, as a business owner, do not apply an effective and comprehensive effort the identification step, you will often be unable to find and/or hire strong employees, such as Driver, Outside/inside Sales Representatives, Installer, or Project Manager, that will succeed in your business. Through this step employers should be able to detect “soft skills” in potential candidates. These are the skills that can be transferred between different jobs and different industries allowing the candidate to be adaptable. Identifying people with the right skills to fulfil the role and contribute to the organization’s success should be at the forefront of their mind.
TEST – Many business owners and managers feel that the interview is the second most important step, but that is not the case. If you have experienced any hiring mistakes in the past, those errors were probably the result of an interview in which the candidate made a positive impression on you. Unfortunately, many candidates are capable of making a favorable impression in an interview but are not capable of actually doing the job and being productive. The results you gather from the correct test (i.e. accounting, sales, ability, intelligence, computer applications, personality, industry-specific process knowledge, etc.) can either confirm or challenge your initial impression of the candidate. For that reason, this is the second most important step, although it is actually the fourth step, in the process.
INTERVIEW – Of all the steps in the hiring process, the conversational INTERVIEW is the least significant step, although some would beg to differ. No other step in the interview process helps you measure self-presentation, composure, maturity, style, wit, responsiveness, thoughtfulness, or eye contact. Occasionally, the only way you can accurately assess the candidate is in a conversational interview, but without the other – more important – steps, you could potentially be wasting your time. If you have not performed the other steps properly, you will not know if the candidate is truly under-qualified or incapable of performing the job. Make sure that during this step of the process you are not wasting time on items that can be answered on an application or the resume.
Unfortunately, the resume has become a far less important tool than it once was. The only real information that can be gathered from a resume, anymore now, is the projected length a candidate would spend with your company. Make sure to note those work trends for potential candidates so you know when to expect some kind of depression, distraction, slump, or other downturn in performance, as those could all be signs the person is about to jump ship. People are creatures of habit and are no different when it comes to the workplace.
The hiring process for businesses should always remain a thorough and carefully executed process. Make sure you are constantly keeping your process up to date and that you do not become lax in any one step. Hiring great employees can be difficult, but if you value the process and place your efforts into the critical steps you will be able to find the diamond in the rough you have been looking for.
At Cogent Analytics, we never stop looking for ways to improve your business and neither should you. So, check out some of our other posts for helpful business information:
