Hiring Great Sentient Beings!

Once you’ve been running a company for a bit, you begin to notice that turnover is really hard.  Not only do have to get to know someone new, as a business owner you have to hire and train someone new too, and that takes time and money.

As sorry as that sounds, it’s true that a new employee is going to cost you money for a while before they become an asset.  Hiring good people is essential to reducing that cost and then getting the most out of them later.

Here are a few recommendations on finding the best people:

• Know what you want.  Before you publish a job advertisement, sit down with the people in your company that will be working with your new hire (or even those that you consider to be potential candidates) and create a list of skills and experience that would be the best fit for your company.
• Look in the right places.  Once you know what you want, you should look in the best places for that candidate.  Many industries have trade-specific job boards where candidates already involved in the industry will look first for jobs.  Sometimes networking with the correct departments of colleges and technical schools will get you good candidates.  Also, ask your employees to recommend people that they think would be good at the job.
• Interviews are essential.  Candidates often get help preparing for interviews, from coaching to mock interviews.  Interviewers sometimes need to do the same.  The questions that you want to prepare for an interview should be focused, and you should know what kinds of answers you want to hear in advance.  Vague or long answers to simple questions can be red flags.  On the other hand, have a couple of curve-ball questions that will force the candidate out of their comfort zone so that you can hear them think on their feet.

Employees are an important asset to your company, one that can be really hard to identify on the balance sheet.  Even as you recognize the cost of hiring, you want to make sure that you spend enough time in preparation and consideration to find the right person for your company.