It is fair to say that the owner of small business builds the business; but it’s the employees who make it a success. It has been our personal experience and those of countless other owners that if you want to make your business successful pay careful attention to who you are hiring. Hiring a “right” employee can improve your sales by almost 15-20%; while hiring the “wrong” one can bring it down by the same amount.
How do you make sure you are hiring the “right” employee? What are the good practices you can follow to ensure you don’t end up with someone who will bring your sales down? Here we outline suggestions that can help you do that.
- Ask your current employees for referral. If you already have some employees who are doing good job ask them to suggest their friends or former colleagues who want to join your business. Chances are friends of good employees are equally good. Besides, you will have the benefit of having a good teamwork amongst your crew.
- Check how often they have changed jobs in the past. If someone is switching jobs every few months you can bet that he is not going to stick with you for a long time. Do not hire them even if they are good in interview.
- Ask behavioral questions in the interview. You can teach someone how to do certain tasks if they don’t know them well. However, you cannot turn an obnoxious employee who doesn’t work well with others into someone different. Behaviors are hard to change. That’s why ask them question that will bring out their behaviors in the interview. Some of the behavioral questions you can ask are – Tell me how you worked with someone who you didn’t like; how did you handle the situation when there were less employees during rush hour; etc.
- Do a team interview. Involve some of your current employees in the interview process. The benefits are twofold – you will avoid basing your decision on your personal bias. At the same time, you will build rapport between current employees and new hires from day one. Besides involving employees in day-to-day decision making makes them feel better and makes them give their best to the business.
- Perform background check. People can (and do) lie or at least exaggerate in the resume and during the interview. You have to make sure what they said in the interview matches with what they actually did in the past. Always ask for 2 business references from past employers and 2 personal references. It is only when you talk to those people that you get a better picture of the potential employee.
- Be prepared to pay more. If you find a good candidate; don’t hesitate to pay more than the market. You will get more than what you spend in the form of higher sales. We would argue that you should take the same approach with the current employees who are good. One word of caution – rather than giving them higher base pay; set up a bonus so that they can earn more if they meet certain parameters. This will keep them motivated.
- Finally, always be on the lookout for good employees. Don’t just go out to hire someone when you need him. Be on the lookout for good candidates when you meet your colleagues, competitors or customers. You can always find room for good employees. Besides, many small businesses have high turnover anyway. So you will always need someone tomorrow, if not today.
Do you have any other practices you follow for hiring good employees? Can you share with us in the comments?
