Hiring for Success:
Good resource management by business owners can create fairly lean organizations. Owners choosing to maintain the least number of employees needed to run their operations minimize overhead expenses and protect cash flow. The equation, finely tuned for the current situation, may slip out of balance quickly if the company is confronted with substantial growth. Growth can either be anticipated, controlled and planned for or it can occur quickly and unexpectedly. One resource that growth impacts, in a major way, is the number of employees currently in the company and their skill sets. Adding a new employee requires a thoughtful process to insure the person hired can successfully accomplish the outcomes you intend. Depending on the circumstances, this process may frequently be overlooked or undervalued as a tool in solving the company's workload needs. Often hiring an employee is a reactive response rather than proactive and can result in dissatisfaction for both the owner and the employee. What does a hiring process look like? Does it have to be involved and time consuming? Will good candidates be gone before the process is completed? The hiring process can be broken into manageable phases. Begin with the goal you want to achieve by adding this employee. What are the benefits to you and the company? Next define the tasks associated with the job. There may be only a few tasks done every day or there may be numerous tasks with differing frequencies done throughout the week or month. With a majority of the tasks outlined, list what skills, work history and formal training/education you want in the ideal candidate. The operative word is ideal. List each job task or responsibility in the order of frequency or importance followed by the list of skills, etc. You now have a checklist to use when reviewing resumes and you can also use this information to write an advertisement for the newspaper or professional publications. Use a weighted score for each task and a weighted score for each skill to quantify the screening process. Time spent at the beginning of the process will minimize the amount of time necessary to interview candidates. Using the checklist, resumes are screened [objectively] for their content. The individual's work history, the type of companies [size, industry] they have worked for can be checked against the elements necessary for the available job. Similarly, the individual's skill set and experience can also be evaluated. This step in the process quickly identifies which candidates are chosen for interviews. For the actual interviews, prepare a list of questions. As you ask each candidate a question, pay more attention to whether you liked [it felt right] the answer, rather than the content [it sounded right]. Business owners are constantly making decisions, some with short-term effects and others with very long-term effects. Hiring an employee definitely affects the long term. Appreciate how valuable a hiring process can be for your business and take the time up front to hire for success. ©2000-present Flight Unlimited - All Rights Reserved |
