Hiring new employees is an ongoing challenge faced by all businesses. We have all, at some point, chosen the wrong candidate. Often this is somebody who looks good on paper, interviews well, and has an excellent resume but turns out to be a poor fit for your company culture.
Or, you may have lost a good hire because you failed to provide a smooth onboarding process that encouraged them to stay. Poor onboarding reduces retention and may result in an employee quitting as soon as you finish their training.
So, how can you hire confidently and choose the right people who will be assets to your company and stick around?
1. Identify the Best Employee Traits For your Business
Many mismatches aren't because the person is a "bad employee" but simply because they are a poor fit for your company culture. Ideally, this should be identified early in the process. To do so, you need to have a solid idea of a poor fit.
This means identifying your core business values and looking for traits that match them. For example, "professionalism" can mean many things to different people. Understanding what it means for your company will help you pick employees with the same interpretation.
It also means looking at your team dynamics so you can understand how a new hire will fit in. One way to do this is to collect feedback from employees and leadership about how they perceive the company culture and team dynamics. They are likely to see things you might have missed.
Prioritizing your culture to find the right fit does not mean ignoring tangible things like skills. Yet, it can sometimes be better to hire a good fit that needs a little more training than somebody who checks all the boxes but does not share your values.
It would help if you also had a proper business plan for hiring new employees. Ideally, the people you hire should be future candidates for leadership in your organization.
2. Own the Hiring ProcessFirst of all, your hiring process needs to be structured. It must be strategic, consistent, and systematic. Nobody should be making hiring decisions unilaterally or arbitrarily.
A structured hiring process helps with compliance and diversity as well as helping newer managers do it right. Your selection process should include various interview stages. Interviews should be designed to reveal suitability for the position and good organizational fit.
At the same time, your hiring process should be based on data. Getting feedback from new hires about the hiring and onboarding process is vital. They are in the best place to tell you what is and is not working from their perspective. Recording how long people stay in the position and how well they work out helps you refine the process and remove obstacles to the new member onboarding process you need to ensure retention.
3. Onboarding and Training With a PEOA professional employer organization (PEO) makes a massive difference to your ability to have a good onboarding and training process. They can also advise on how to write an adequate position description, how to do remote onboarding, so new hires hit the ground running on their first day, and where and how to find the right training for your new people.
This helps you develop your strategy faster. Also, by taking on mundane HR tasks, a PEO allows you to spend more time developing a hiring strategy. This makes recruiting, hiring, and onboarding employees more streamlined and allows you to plan for the future.
PRO Resources helps you develop a strategic hiring process and hire confidently, allowing your company to grow. Also, we free you to focus on the strategic (money-making) side of your business by taking on time-consuming tasks such as payroll, benefits administration, and a myriad of HR tasks that are essential but don't generate revenue for your company.