When you start up your own business or are put into a managing position, one of the tiles of the job which might have you a little stumped is the hiring process. If you have never hired anyone before it can be a little bit intimidating at first to be out in the position of hiring a new employee. However, it is an integral part of any business and you need to learn the best ways to identify that ideal candidate and who should be the newest member of your team.
Look for someone who is committed
The ideal person for any role you want to hire for is the person who shows 100% that they are committed. There are several ways that you can identify if a person is committed to the role, and the first one is by testing them on what they know about your business. Anyone who really wants a job with your company will have done their research before coming to the interview to get an idea of who you are and what you do. They will want to impress you. The second way is by asking them if they do any reading on the subject outside work. For example with a role in marketing such as SEO, the technology is constantly changing so the candidate will need to follow SEO sites like MOZ to keep up to date with news.
Test for Learning and Analytical Skills
During an interview you are only really seeing a snapshot of who a person is, but in this time you will want to make sure that you are able to test them on what they can do. You can either set them a task to complete before the interview and talk it through with them on the day, or you can alternatively set them a small test to complete during the interview. It could be a knowledge test or a test of their skills- for example asking a graphic designer to create a piece of copy for your brand according to a brief. It doesn’t have to be a massive task, but it will give you an idea of how they deal with work and under pressure.
Check Compatibility
When you are interviewing for a position in your team, one of the things you will want to do is try and assess whether or not that person will fit in with your current team. It is just as important when hiring someone that you will get along with them on a personal level as well as on a professional level. If you are sat in an interview and the person is either really quiet or they seem a little stuck up, is that the kind of person you want to be spending the best of your week working with? Probably not. Try to add some conversation into your interview to try and gauge what they are like as a person.
Keep Improving Your Hiring Process
This isn’t to say you need to immediately introduce drug testing and three stages of interviews, but you do need to make sure that the process you use to assess potential candidates to make sure you end up with the right person. Rather than asking irrelevant questions or random bullet questions during the interview like ‘if you were to have a dinner party with one person from history…’ because this will waste the short time you have to talk to the candidate and work out who they really are. Take some time to go through their CV at the beginning of the interview and talk to them about their previous roles. Once you have done this you can talk about the tile you are hiring for and ask questions to work out how they will fit in.
Hire Interns
Believe it or not, some of the best employees you can have for your business could start out as interns. When you hire an intern you will be having to teach them the ropes from the ground up, and this will take time and effort, however because you put in that time and effort you are much more likely to end up with employees who are loyal to you and want to progress further into the business.
Get Social
This doesn’t mean asking your candidate if they have a partner: but rather it means taking a look deeper into their online presence. Look through their social accounts and you will likely get a good idea of the type of person you are looking to hire.
