Most companies struggle with hiring and retaining good people and also struggle to get new employees trained for success. Most companies do not have the background in these processes. With the increasing demand for skilled labor it is more crucial than ever to be successful in hiring and training.
Hiring
Hiring takes place in three phases:
- Advertising the job
- Screening applicants
- Interviewing selected applicants
Advertising the job is the first crucial step in hiring good employees. You have to be able to advertise a job in such a way that you get a really good applicant pool. Many times, a good job gets poor or no applicants because of the way the posting is written or where it is posted. To use a fishing analogy, you have to use the right bait to catch the fish you are after. Otherwise, you are just drowning worms.
If you have written your job advertisement correctly you should have a good pool of potential applicants. You now need to screen these applicants and select two or three that you would like to pursue. This screening process should include some follow up with the most likely candidates as well as talking to references. Think of this as a pre-interview, it doesn’t have to be face to face and most times will be over the phone.
Once you are comfortable with the final two or three you then schedule a formal interview. At this point you are looking for the “best fit”. Their experience and skill set need to line up with your job. Your compensation package and their income needs should line up. And maybe most importantly do you think they will work well at your place – do they fit your culture?
All of this takes time. Perhaps it takes more time than you have to give. This may lead to just finding bodies to fill a vacancy and thus you do not get the employee that can help you grow the business.
Training
So now that you have this new employee you need to set them up for success. This is going to be done through specific training in the job they are going to perform. Again, this takes forethought and time to put together and to do. Training requires you to define certain things:
- Desired outcomes
- Training structure
- Who is going to do the training?
- When is this going to be done?
Most employers and their managers know what they want done, but are not good at it or don’t have time to carry out the training. Thus, most training never occurs or is done poorly. You may have hired a great person, but can you turn them into a great employee? Your employee performance determines your ultimate success. You really can’t afford not to do this correctly!
What we have learned
If you can have the complete process conducted by the people who are going to hire and train the employee you get a higher rate of success. Since that person has gone through the hiring process they already know something about the person hired. They also know what the new employee’s responsibilities and outcomes are. It also puts pressure on that person to make sure this new employee succeeds.
Robert Counts, robert@countsbusinessconsulting.com; 512-693-6915
Chad Counts, crcounts@countsbusinessconsulting.com; 512-963-4626