13 Crucial Methods to Hire the Right Person for Your Small Business

Hiring the right person is not easy. The majority of small businesses today struggle due to wrong hiring decisions. Hiring the wrong employee is time-consuming, costly to your business environment and expensive in the long run. On the other hand, hiring the right employee pays back in spades in terms of productivity, client-employee relationship and a positive work environment.

Research shows that one negative employee can cast a shadow of darkness all over the office environment. Everyone who gets in touch with him or her gets negative. Clients will walk away and never come back again.

When you realize you made a wrong hiring decision, you should fire the employee, cut your losses and move on. As the saying goes, do not complain or explain. As the boss or executive manager, you are responsible for everything that happens in your organization. When you start complaining and blaming your employees, you become the victim instead of taking control.

Employees will never respect a leader who blames, criticizes or complains all the time. Remember, your employees are looking at you all the time. So, when should you fire an employee who is not performing? The moment it crosses your mind. Don’t fall into the trap of waiting for the employee to change. He or she won’t change if he or she doesn’t love what he or she is doing.

By firing such employees, you’ll bot only help your business recover but also assist them in discovering their passions and pursuing them.

Good employees can never be fired by their bosses unless the business goes bankrupt. Great employees are a source of joy and pride for their bosses. Therefore, making the right hiring decision is crucial for the success of your business.

Hiring the right employees improves the work culture and pays back with improved employee morale, positive thinking, and adequate planning and the achievement of challenging goals and objectives. It also ensures that employees are making the best out of their time and energy.

So, how can you increase your chances of making the right hiring decisions? Here are thirteen crucial methods to hire the right person for your small business. Let’s get started!

#1.Connect the candidate’s aspirations with the job

While creating a job description for the role that you want to fill, you should pay attention and see how the position will grow in the next five years. How does your ideal candidate fit into your business’s growth plan? During the interviewing process, you need to understand your candidates’ aspirations. Where does your candidate see himself or herself in the next three years?

Why does he or she think that this job will help him get where he wants to be? Understanding the career goals of all your potential candidates will help you see if they are a good fit for the job. It’s crucial to get a clear sense of how your ideal candidate will grow in the job that he or she is seeking in the long run.

If the candidates’ goals and company goals don’t align, you should not consider hiring the candidate even if he or she has surpassed the qualifications. It’s better to employ a positive underqualified candidate than a negative overqualified candidate.

#2. Vet the candidates properly

It is easier to skip the vetting process and hire straight away based on qualifications. After all, it’s a taxing and time-consuming process. It is also difficult to determine how interactions with previous coworkers will affect your business and the vacant position.

However, always looking for the shortcut creates big problems along the way. Vetting your potential candidates is one of the most important steps to making the right hiring decisions. Focus on the references of the candidate. Apart from verifying their employment history, you also want to understand who they are, how they work and how they associate with their coworkers.

Since you already know the characteristics that you are looking for in a candidate, you’ll only have to match their past performance with your desired results. And this must involve vetting their references and asking questions regarding their work ethic and capabilities. You can also ask your candidates to let you have a glimpse of their previous work.

#3. Don’t focus on the past

You are probably thinking that this point contradicts the previous one. Not really! While it’s crucial to vet and do a reference check, there is a difference between understanding their work ethic and capabilities and diving too deep into their past.

Instead of asking questions that will make your candidates repeat the entire information presented in their resumes, you should focus on how they’ll solve real problems that are part of the open position and understanding their potential. After all, you already went through their resumes. There’s no need to go through it one hundred times.

You should ask them relevant open-ended questions and see how they answer. Don’t be hyper-focused on the past. People do change for the better. Focus on the present moment and the future. Making mistakes is a part of growth and development.

#4. Consider other strategies to evaluate your candidates

The traditional interviewing method is becoming obsolete as the days’ pass. While the face to face interview is one of the best strategies used by most successful companies, it’s easy to make a hiring decision based on the candidates’ interviewing skills.

Some candidates are just great interviewers. They know how to respond to questions quickly and effectively. On the other hand, others might struggle answering questions correctly due to anxiety. With these facts in mind, it’s not easy to evaluate candidates’ skills and personality using this method.

This does not mean that you should abandon face to face interviews completely. However, you should add some tools to your arsenal while interviewing such as questionnaires based on skills and personality tests. By interviewing your candidates face to face and using other effective measurement tools, you’ll increase your chances of making the right hiring decisions.

#5. Ensure candidates interact with your team

As you’ve seen, the standard face to face interview process is not the best way to discover whether your potential candidate is best suited for the role or not. You’ll need to do much more to determine if the candidate will fit in with your employees and the culture of your organization.

You should consider introducing potential candidates to different environments and situations at the workplace and seeing how they fit in with other employees. This hiring process will ensure that the candidates spend time with at least five employees in different environments be it coffee, lunch or at work.

By doing this, you’ll get an opportunity to see how your candidates interact with employees. Plus, your employees will give you feedback on the candidates. This will help you make informed decisions and address any red flags.

#6. Pay attention to the questions candidates ask

It’s common for candidates to ask questions during the interview. A candidate who asks questions shows that he or she is engaged and prepared for the role.

Therefore, the interview should not be focused on how well the candidate answers questions but how well he or she can interact with the interviewer. Interviews should not be one-sided instead, they should be an interaction. The best candidates think about the teams they’ll be on, their managers and how to make the company move forward.

#7. Work with your potential candidate first

Wouldn’t it be great if you saw how your potential candidate works and interacts with others before hiring? It’s possible! You can consider bringing in your potential candidate to help you brainstorm ideas for a project or execute a small task for the role that you are hiring for.

Successful organizations such as Gelt Venture have used this method and it has greatly minimized hiring errors. One of the best ways to make a good hiring decision is working with your potential candidate.

You can also test their problem-solving skills in a normal working environment. All you have to do is pick a problem associated with the role that your business is currently facing and work with them to solve it. By doing this, you’ll understand their work ethic, capabilities and how they fit into the organization’s culture.

#8. Prioritize your company culture

What defines the culture of your organization? What type of workplace do you want to create? What character traits do you value in your employees? It’s critical to ensure that all potential hires fit with the culture of your company. For this to happen, you’ll have to define your culture and what you expect to find in your potential candidate.

While interviewing your candidates, you should ask questions that highlight the traits that you are looking for in a candidate. Since most candidates look perfect on paper, you’ll need to consider other qualifications, their soft skills, and values.

#9. Know what they are terrible at

We can’t be perfect in everything. We have strengths and weaknesses. And weaknesses are not bad things. They are things that help us know where we should improve.

Therefore, you should ask your candidates what they think they are terrible at. Their answers will help you assess whether they are compatible with the organization’s culture and core values. You’ll also discover what they are doing about their weaknesses to become better people.

#10. Hire someone you can work for

You should only hire a person that you can work comfortably. Would you feel confident working under your potential candidate? If the answer is yes, then he or she will probably become a good leader. If you can’t, chances are he or she will not work well with some employees in your organization and this might lead to low productivity and performance in the long run.

#11. Take your time

The best decisions are made when you take your time to contemplate and reflect. You should sleep on it for a couple of days. Avoid making rush decisions on important things such as hiring a candidate. Hiring quickly increases the chances of winding up with a person who will not fit in the organization.

As the saying goes, patience pays. And it pays back in spades. According to Peter Drucker, if you can’t make a decision, keep gathering information. As you gather information, the right decision will rise like cream and you’ll end up with great employees.

#12. Be clear about your expectations

If you are running a startup, you should be honest with your potential candidates as to what they should expect in the future. For instance, they might be expected to work harder and longer on different roles to get the business running.

Being honest will help you determine whether the candidate is ready for the challenges ahead. Be honest and communicate clearly with your candidates as early as possible to avoid inconveniences.

#13. Trust your intuition

No one ever goes against his or her intuition and gets positive results. Your intuition acts as your guide. And the best part is it’s always right. Therefore, don’t make decisions based on logic alone. Your intuition will save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

Conclusion

With these thirteen tips, you should be ready to start the hiring process. After using these tips, you’ll be amazed by the results you’ll get. And your organization will become a huge success!

About the Author!

Tobias Foster is a professional editor and writer for BrillAssignment. With a 5-year work experience, he has managed to amass a wealth of knowledge in marketing, philosophy, and business. He truly is a master of his craft.