Of all the jargon, cliches and worldly advice that gets thrown your way as a newbie entrepreneur, there is only one you need to write down on a post-it note and stick on the top right corner of your desktop and it’s this: your success completely depends on your employees. We know that’s slightly unnerving (especially for the control-freaks and egotistical among us), but it’s the truth. That’s why you need to hire the right people from the get-go.
Unfortunately, this ain’t as simple as looking through a bunch of resumes and picking the one repeats everything you wrote in the job description.
So, without further ado, here are some top tips, tricks and bits of advice to help you improve your hiring process:
Employer Branding Is The Best
Most people looking for jobs aren’t actually looking for jobs. Mmm hmmm. Riddle us that? What it means is, 75% of professionals are “passive candidates” open to exploring new opportunities. That’s why you need to work on building a strong employer brand. This won’t just reduce employee turnover by a cool 30(ish) percent, but also attract the passive candidates we mentioned above to your company. Translation: top talent comes to you and not someone else.
Early Bird And All That
We know how hectic your life as an entrepreneur can be and how important it is to mull over the right candidates, but if you don’t act fast the top talents will be gone. Yup. You have approximately 10 days to snap up the best of the bunch. So, if you know you’re interested in a certain applicant, even if you haven’t made a decision yet, you need to get your act together and follow up with them. Let them know you are interested and put yourself on their radar.
Bring In The Professionals
An entrepreneur needs to wear many hats, but that doesn’t mean they need to do every single job themselves, especially something as important-slash-complex as hiring the best person for the job and your culture. Our advice: look into human resource consulting and get their advice on what sort of soft-skills you should be highlighting, and bring in a recruitment company that has a pool of candidates at their fingertips. Not only will this take the pressure off you, it will let you get on with the whole ‘keeping your business successful’ thing.
Write Persuasive Employment Ads
Nothing is going to alienate quality (and qualified) candidates than a description that just lists the responsibilities and requirements you’re after. That’s too much of you demanding abilities. Instead, you want to use the needs-supplies approach, which highlights all the things you – the company – can do for the candidate, which is a surefire way of enticing the best of the best out there. The reason this works better is because it attracts candidates who will better fit your needs. Not just in terms of skills but in terms of personality, which is way more important because skills can be taught and attitude cannot.
