When it comes to the success and growth of your business, the main thing you cannot overlook is the overall foundation of your industry. No, I am not talking about the simple day-to-day operations that are held within the office. Instead, I am referring to the quality and talent coming into the workplace.
For years, many startups and large businesses have overlooked the hiring process of their employees. While some aspects of this has change, such as various interviewing rounds or strategic higher order thinking questions within the interviews themselves, the overall landscape of the finding and keeping talent has led to an immense amount of turn over and negative company culture. To prevent this from happening, you as a business leader need to take the initiative to improve the logistics and procedures within your hiring team. The simple reason why this needs to happen is that the people you bring in are the ones that will be cultivating a brimming bright and effective future. To squander that opportunity in any way is not only detrimental to the staff, but also to the company as a whole.
To prevent this from happening, first start off your efforts on improving the recruiting procedures. Start off by analyzing holistically your overall hiring process. Ask yourself what type of people you are looking for and how you are trying to attract them. In one of my earlier blogs, What to Look for In a Team When Building a Business, I noted specifically six main traits that embody the perfect employees.
These six are the individuals:
1. Long-term investment
2. Passion and Enthusiasm
3. Team Player
4. Effective Results
5. Ambition
6. Responsiveness
While it may be easy to find these individuals, the main problem many companies face is attracting them to a new job. Because of this, you may be competing against highly established firms and businesses that could possibly give them more of what you can offer. To improve on this, see what additional incentives you can offer other than monetary success. This can be flexible hours, strong company culture, or even specific company perks. Whatever is the case, make sure these points are highlighted during the interview. Sometimes, these topics are not mentioned unless the interviewee asks about them. To extend that reach for the perfect candidate, make sure your human resources and people operations come prepared in speaking about those topics.
Once you have reviewed your hiring process, take time to see how you can shorten the hiring time of your company and structure your interviews. Many reasons why companies have longer hiring processes can range from the interviews themselves to more logistical matters such as background, personality, or skill test. One option to get ahead of your competitors is assessing only specific matters that pertain to the job. Say for example New York Times is looking for a new writer to add to their staff. It does not make sense to give them a consulting problem to test their higher order thinking skillset. Instead, test what they will potentially be doing if they were hired for the job.
Last but not least, part of the hiring process should not just be about finding, signing, and employing that candidate. Instead, look at your company culture and the overall retention rate of its employees. If you are finding that the ratio of that coming-in to that coming-out is unstable, or worse, uneven (weighing more on the coming-out side), then it is vital that you fix that problem. One of the most fundamental business facts with hiring a candidate is that it is more costly to bring someone than to leave an existing employee. This is because of the time and money that will need to be invested into a new individual than someone that you can shape and work with. Whatever is the case, pay more attention to your company culture and see how that factor can impact your retention rates.
