Insights

11 29 2016

The career experiences that have made the most lasting impressions on me have always been those involving hiring staff members. Some of my greatest successes have been in hiring people who have blown through the ceiling of my expectations; my greatest challenges, not having enough of the right people in place to handle the tasks at hand. Throughout my career, one tenet has proven itself to me again and again:

Staffing is the most important component of your business. 

More than any other factor, having the right people with the appropriate skills in the correct positions is what will determine your business’s success. Bringing on even a single new hire who lacks the right attributes takes up valuable resources in payroll and training time, and can have a detrimental effect on productivity and morale. And that can quickly snowball, resulting in increased workloads, less time to spend on proper hiring practices, and in some cases even staff departures, increasing the urgency of hiring.

Here are some best practices to utilize to avoid this downward staffing spiral:

1. Always be scouting. Even if you are doing everything in your power to retain your staff, things outside your control can and will occur. You will get a leg up on emergency staffing by continuously sourcing new talent. Remember also that unless you are constantly scouting for talent, you have no real plan for supporting business growth or staff development.
2. Include your current staff. Having your existing team members take part in your hiring process leverages them to expedite this often time-consuming process. This practice also gains you added perspective and the ability to see whether the candidate will complement—or clash with—the existing team. At the same time, you are showing your staff that you value their opinion and input, and empowering them by giving them a chance to help decide who will be working alongside them.
3. Interview candidates regularly. Interviewing is a skill that needs to be practiced and honed; conducting interviews on a regular basis also helps to make your hiring process more efficient. As long as you are up front about your staffing situation and make no false promises to candidates, at the very least you could create a favorable business contact. You may even find that you can create a position for a candidate that you believe has great potential. 
4. Use behavioral interview questions. Behavioral questions can be used to test a candidate’s ability to think under pressure and how well they have prepared for the interview. It is important to take notes, but only on the answers themselves and the candidate’s body language; interpreting the responses can be done later. This allows for a more objective hiring process. Also, having a handful of stock questions for each job competency is a great time-saver, and it provides for a consistent interview process, reducing the potential for cagey and subjective answers to abstract questions.
5. Assess skill levels. If there is a skill necessary for your open position, you must have an objective way of measuring a candidate’s proficiency. Online skills assessments, such as the web-based skills testing program that StratComm offers, allows for candidates and current employees to all be held to the same standards. By properly assessing a candidate’s skill level, you are doing your best to ensure that they are competent at the level required for the job. Having a standard set of skill tests for all applicants ensures a fair hiring process while allowing you to potentially discover talents of theirs that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.

Memories of bad hires and short-staffed operations can be funny to look back on, but it’s best to leave them in the distant past. Use these five strategies to help ensure that you are always staffed up, and with the right people.

AUTHOR

Keith Sandler
Project Manager at StratComm