You’ve decided that you need to add an employee – how do you advertise that fact?
If you are a coffee shop, perhaps you put a sign in the window, or if you are in the construction industry, perhaps you put up a sign at your job site.
But what if you are the construction company and your current building site is very far out of town and the skill the position that you are hiring for is a bookkeeper? Are you going to reach the right person simply by putting up a sign at your worksite? Probably not.
You have to think about the skill you are hiring for and think about how that type of person looks for job and advertise appropriately – perhaps the local newspaper, a sign on the grocery store bulletin board, a flyer at a local college or school, etc
Look at your list. When someone comes in the door, how are you going to determine that they possess those skills?
If you are looking for people to make coffee, your interview with them will probably tell you if they have the right personality to meet your customers. One question you may with to use for this situation is “What are your interests outside of work?” If the person likes to be alone and working by themselves and is very shy, then being around a crowd and working at the coffee shop counter probably won’t work for them. But being the dish washer might.
If you are a construction firm, perhaps you ask them to demonstrate their skills, if you are looking for a bookkeeper perhaps you look at their educational background and past employment records.
Before you advertise that you are hiring, think through these questions.
So you’ve decided that you are going to hire someone – you advertise the position is available and someone comes to you and says that they want the job being advertised. Do you hire them?
Maybe … but how do you know that you are hiring the right person? Before you make it known that you are hiring, you need to think about the skills that are required for the position you are hiring for. If you are hiring a bookkeeper, you probably want them to have experience as a bookkeeper for a small business.
Think about the position that you would like to hire for right now. What skills are required to do that job? Go ahead and write them down.
Your expectations need to be realistic about new employees. They are not going to be immediately productive – even when you hire someone with experience. It takes time to integrate into your specific environment.
Many people fail to consider the time it takes away from the employee doing the training. This may be you or it may be another employee. If you have a large project going on in your company and the deadline for completion is very soon and you ask a supervisor or another employee involved in the project to train the new employee, understand that the net effect is that they will have to take time away from the project to train the employee. If that’s a trade-off you’re willing to make, that’s fine, but may want to consider delaying hiring so the trainer can be full-time on the project that is coming due.
Say that you have been running every aspect of your business but you realize that you need help with marketing. You probably want to hire someone with experience because you are looking to significantly grow your business. You don’t want to have someone “learn” how to do marketing on your time and potentially at your expense. However, if you need to hire someone to assist your Director of Marketing, it may be OK to hire someone without experience.
If you are hiring someone without experience, you will want to look for someone that wants and is willing to learn.
Be very careful hiring someone without experience for a position that requires experience just because their salary would be lower. It is likely that it would be a better investment to hire someone with experience – even at the higher salary because it will take significantly longer for the person without experience to become productive and it’s quite likely that they will make mistakes along the way. The experienced person has already made those mistakes and (hopefully) learned from them.
You work hard to have your business be a place that someone enjoys working. If you are doing your job as a manager, your employees enjoy their jobs and get along with each other.
When hiring, you will want to consider how their personality fits in with your existing team or with other employees in your business. Consider this, your coffee shop wants to increase business – especially during the morning hours, so you advertise for a baker – someone to bake delicious pastries right in your store. The best baker in the city puts in his application for the job, but he is known for being extremely demanding and unappreciative of anyone that works around him. In fact, the reason he is applying for this job is because he was fired from his last job because he was so demanding and hard to work with. Your morning team is good – your customers love them and they work hard.
Do you hire the baker? (Pause and let them think about this for a moment)
Here’s what you need to consider – you may have the best pastries in town but will your morning team remain happy and satisfied working in your coffee stop after the demanding baker is hired? Is the ability to advertise that you have the best baker in town working for you more valuable to your business than your current team that your customers love?
Only you can make that decision…
Hiring a person who does not have the right skills to do the job or be trained for the job will only cause you great frustration – not increased productivity! It is irresponsible of you to spend significant amounts of your time or an employee’s time trying to train someone and supervise them when they don’t have the skills necessary to do the job.
Hiring someone that doesn’t fit in with the rest of your team will cause the team to be upset and productivity will be lost.
Hiring an inexperienced person for a position that requires experience will significantly delay the time required for the new employee to be productive. This usually frustrates the rest of the team and can affect customers’ attitudes as well if they are expecting a certain level of service or expertise and they don’t get it.
In these cases, it would have been better for your overall business to have not hired and continue to run short-handed until you find the right person for the job.
