When your business grows and the new challenges become overwhelming it is time to hire. Hiring is easy, but hiring RIGHT is a demanding process. The first thing to do is to assess where you are with your skills and readiness to start this process to make the recruitment a success.  

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1.  What is the exact reason to hire now?

It seems like an obvious and almost redundant question, but the hiring process looks very different when it is about adding a new salesman or bringing new expertise or skills to the team, so making the reason for hiring crystal clear at the very beginning of the process saves plenty of mess,  complications, delays and frustrations. 

 2. Have you got a great Job Description?

Many small business owners make the mistake of skipping this part of the pre-hiring homework.  Job description is like an anchor during the hiring process. It is necessary not only for the candidate’s clarity about the role, but also for the hiring managers to remain focused on looking for the right qualifications that are critical for the success of the future new employee. It helps avoid personal biases and helps to be more objective and focused. 

 3. Have you got a “perfect candidate” profile?

Just like the entrepreneurial business’s Avatar – the model of a perfect client,  in recruiting you need your candidates’ profile to know who they are, where they are, what they do and plenty more. Writing it all down before taking any action, especially before posting the job on social media,  is very useful. It also helps to identify who is not right for you. 

4. How good are your interviewing skills?

 Asking questions and having an easy conversation is easy but not when a great job in your growing business is at stake. Every question is important and brings information to the table. Asking the right ones to collect the right information is the first secret of a great interview. Interpreting the answers and figuring out what they represent is the next level of this art. 

5. Have you got an interviewing method or strategy?  

I’m sure you have heard of the ” comparing apple to apple”  business technique. Many very experienced business people are very inexperienced in selecting talent. This usually shows during the last stage of their interviewing process when they try to decide which of the candidates they have seen is the RIGHT one.  Hiring managers can choose from a  variety of methods to interview candidates as long as the method allows them to compare “apple to apple” at the end of the process. Random conversations that look and sound different every time lead to an  “I don’t know” situation, which means that the final hiring decision is made by the” gut feeling” – the worst possible way of hiring. 

6. Do you know when and how to apply your “gut feeling” and intuition?

We all want to hire and work with people who are competent –  who CAN do the job,  hard-working  – who WILL do the job, and nice –  who we will LIKE.  Our interviewing should cover all three angles but it’s only in the last part – which is about candidates Emotional Intelligence,  where we actually can start listening to our intuition and make the most out of our self-awareness. 

7. Is your Employer Value Proposition positively differentiating you from the competition?

Candidates who are actively looking for a new job usually comb the market and know which companies they would like to work for. Chances are their research is better than yours, and it’s ok, as long as you know what is it about your company that should make them consider you first.  Salary is usually not the most powerful advantage because employees are attracted to a lot more than just money these days. Broad and well-presented EVP can help with getting an amazing person to work for you. 

8. Do you know how to ensure a very positive candidate’s experience (so that they all want to become your employee tomorrow)? 

Very often candidates walk away from the interviewing process with a sense of being poorly treated.  A proper start, great interviews, and simple but personalized feedback, in the end, will make every candidate, who did not land the job with you, walk away gutted. These people can be your “talent pipeline” for the future, but also the best advertisers for your brand.  If you truly want to grow your business your Employer Brand should matter and a respectful interviewing process is an excellent opportunity to build a solid base for it. 

9. Do you know what can be compromised and how to choose the best new joiner for your team?

 If you did a good job interviewing you have a lot of valuable information about each of the candidates, but at the end of the process, there is often a dilemma between the last two. This can be tricky because nobody is perfect.

If the job you are about to give is very precious and it matters to the growth of your business,  making the right choice between the last two candidates means you need to compromise somewhere between smartness, capabilities, or personality.   

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