Have you ever had to work with someone so difficult that it felt like every single decision you made and every piece of work you undertook was made doubly hard by that person’s interference? There are some people, who even by their very presence, just make life difficult.
The knock-on effect of working around someone like this is a dispirited and unmotivated team and bad feeling among your colleagues or subordinates. You can’t underestimate how much one person’s influence can have on the rest of your team and that’s why making great hiring decisions is crucial to running a great business.
But if you’re starting up your own business or have grown and need to take on staff for the first time, making these kinds of decisions doesn’t necessarily come naturally. You’re busy keeping track of your customer communications, delivering your product or service and planning your next strategic marketing move.
So when you need to hire you can go two ways, you can bring in a recruitment agency who will provide the full package from advertising to interviewing, much like a fully supported IT provider: click here to visit this site.
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Or you can choose to take on the role of HR manager yourself and learn on the job. Take some time to sit down and go through exactly what you want your new team member to do, bearing in mind “everything I don’t have time for”, is not a realistic job description. Instead make a list of daily tasks and duties that your hire will have to get involved with. Afterwards think very deliberately about the sort of person who would be capable of carrying out those tasks. Will they need to be good at working with little supervision or be part of a team?
You’ll also need to make sure you’re very clear on salary and holiday and if the candidate has any scope for flexible working hours or working from home. Being clear right from the start will decrease the chances of bad feeling and mix ups later down the track.
Once you know the what and the who, you need to think of the where; where you will advertise your position. If your industry is rather niche or the position is, then you might want to consider a trade magazine, paper or online but if it’s a general role then advertising on recruiter sites, or even through your local paper should yield enough choice for a decent number of interviews and, of course, rejections.
During the interview stage, remember that you need to click with the candidate on a personal level. They’re going to see you at your most stressed and through all the high points in your business, so you need to get a good sense that they’ll be on your side.
No one said it was easy making great hiring decisions, but you’ll know if you’ve made a wrong one soon enough. Build in a six-month probation period and make your first hire the bar all other hires should reach.