How to hire the right staff
Take a minute to think about your business’ greatest successes and learning experiences to date. Chances are that these will be very much related to great (or poor) staff performance, possibly even your own! As COVID-19 restrictions begin to ease, many businesses are at last either reopening or looking to expand which implies the opportunity to take on new employees. I sincerely believe that the most important decision a business can make is hiring the right staff. However, I wonder how many business owners and managers know how to do this well? Specifically, how many employers do you know have actually undertaken interview skills training or would know how to identify a great fit (or indeed a bad fit!) for the role? If using a recruitment agent, how can you be sure that they really understand your requirements and indeed know how to find the right candidates.
Here’s what I think normally happens: a vacancy becomes available either due to someone leaving or being moved out of the role or is created due to business expansion. Whilst the decision to hire may be made in a timely manner, often the actions required to start the process properly are left until later and so things get missed or at least done in a compressed time-frame. The employer calls the recruitment agent with an ‘urgent’ need to find a suitable person very often purely based upon essential technical skills, years of experience and appropriate salary range. The employer assumes that the recruitment agent knows exactly the type of person they are after and the recruitment agent assumes that the employer will know how to identify the right candidate. Unfortunately, neither is necessarily true. Little wonder then that the 2017 Global Study by Mercer Talent Trends (“Empowerment in a disrupted world”) found that “Half of all employees rated their application and hiring process as average or below average” and the “2018 Turnover and Retention Research Report” by the Australian HR Institute identified a staff turnover rate of 18%.
So, what are the proper actions to begin the recruitment process? Like any other business process, planning is essential and taking the time to do each step properly is vital. The first step is to identify exactly the sort of person that you need. It is well worth involving other key managers and staff in this process since it is not uncommon to find that different people have different perspectives on the role requirements. For this reason, I recommend documenting these requirements properly in a Position Description since not only can this be used as the basis for a good job advertisement, it is also more effective to align understanding on a documented role as opposed to relying on a verbal discussion. It also greatly facilitates the role of the recruitment agent.
Preparation is key, so when resumes and cover letters (also essential!) are received, take the time to review them thoroughly, but don’t rely on these alone. There are many good resume writers out there and nothing beats a properly conducted job interview. Many interviewers focus almost exclusively on the technical skills required for the role but typically companies “hire on skills and fire on fit”. It is therefore very important that there is real clarity on the company culture both now and in the future to get the right fit. Knowing this means that the focus can now be on an individual’s core values and how these align with those of the company combined with an understanding of why the individual really wants the role, I sincerely believe that the chance of “firing on fit” is reduced considerably.
Of course, the requisite technical skills are required, but it is rare that they actually need to be a technical expert in the space; if they do, be prepared to pay for them! If they appear to be a good fit for the business, then any missing technical skills can be (relatively) easily trained, whereas try training someone to fit in to their role or training them to really like it – both are considerably harder!
Ian Ash ACC, AInstIB
Managing Director OrgMent Talent Solutions - www.omtalent.com.au