When you are an entrepreneur running a business, there will come a point when you need to make a choice; either you need to start hiring people, or you must continue to do all the work yourself. The choice you make will be down to how you want to run your business, and how big you want to grow it – being the sole worker is freeing and gives you complete control, but it also limits your business growth.
If you do want to hire people to help you and to make your business bigger, you’ll want to make sure you hire the right people. Making a mistake in the hiring process is costly and time-consuming, and could do more harm to your business than you realize. So just how can you ensure you are hiring the right people? Read on for some useful tips.
Write a Good Job Description
Writing a good job description is the first thing you’ll need to do when you are hiring someone, whether this is your first hire or you’re adding to an existing team. With a good job description in place, you can be more sure that the applicants are going to have the right experience and qualifications. A vague job description will mean lots of people apply who aren’t right for the role, and you’ll need to sort through them all.
Take some time to list down all the requirements you are looking for. What kind of experience is needed? What qualifications? What kind of personality? By getting your job description right from the start, you will reduce the number of people applying, but the ones who do apply will be much more suited to the task you want them to perform.
Plan the Interview in Advance
After you have made a shortlist of the candidates who might be suitable for the job you’re advertising, you will need to interview them. Make sure that you plan out the interview ahead of time. Not only will this mean you can be sure of asking great sales interview questions and finding out exactly what you want to know, but it will also give the candidates a good impression of you as being organized and professional. It’s just as important for candidates to be impressed by their potential new employer as it is for the employer to be impressed by the candidates.
As well as asking questions, it is worth showing the candidate around the office space and even letting them see the kinds of systems and processes you use. They need to be sure that they want to work for you, so they must have all the information in advance. It is a waste of time and money to hire someone who then decides they don’t like the job.
Ask Them to Work
Of course, if you haven’t officially hired someone you can’t ask them to work for you, but you can ask them to show you what they can do in a practical sense. It will depend on the role they are being considered for as to whether this will be a useful idea or not.
Not everyone can articulate themselves well in an interview, but that doesn’t mean they’re not the right person to hire. By showing you their practical skills, you’ll get a much better idea of what they can really do.
