How to Hire Great Employees

On the verge of hiring employees for the first time? It’s important to have a strategy and a plan to ensure you find the right people who will work hard for your company for years to come.

Identify Your Company Culture

Defining how your company supports and sustains employees is as important as finding the right people. That comes down to company culture. Company culture encompasses workplace beliefs, values, and behaviors.

Your company culture might encourage employee autonomy, creating opportunities for staff to share their ideas and be included in the decision-making process. It might be one of inclusivity and diversity, with a special focus on hiring people of various backgrounds.

How you define your company culture will determine the kinds of employees you attract. It can help you improve employee retention and keep staff engaged and productive.

Start with a mission statement that describes what you want your company culture to look like. Create a list of values that your company stands for. This is a great starting point for understanding the types of people you want to interview in the hiring process.

Define the Role

The next step is understanding what the scope of each role you’re hiring for looks like. What are the goals this employee should have? What are the day-to-day responsibilities? How will this person know they’ve done a good job?

If you’re hiring someone to take over some of the work you do, make a list of each task you do and use that to write the job description (later, when they’re hired, you’ll want to document the processes so you can train them efficiently).

Determine whether the role requires any specific skills, experience, or education. Add those to the job description.

You may also want to make a list of soft skills that would help this person succeed. These don’t necessarily have to go in the job description, but you can consider how well each candidate meets these qualifications during the interview. For example, if the team you’re hiring for is often under a lot of stress, you’ll want to find someone capable of working under pressure. 

Also, consider whether this role needs to be in the office, remote, or hybrid. You may attract more talent if you open your candidate search up to the possibility of remote employees.

Promote the Job Posting

To maximize your reach, post the listing on a variety of sites and job boards, starting with your own website.  

LinkedIn is a great place to post your job. Also, share the posting to your profile so that your contacts can share it with their contacts, spreading your reach.

If you don’t have a human resources department and don’t want to manage the hiring process yourself, consider hiring a recruiting firm. They can assist you in creating the job description, posting it, and interviewing candidates. You’ll still need to be involved since you want to be sure to hire the right people!

Ask the Right Questions

Interviewing job candidates is a talent in and of itself! The more effort you put into the interview process, the more you’ll be rewarded by being able to assess a candidate’s qualifications accurately.

Avoid stock questions like “where do you see yourself in five years professionally?” Lean toward situational questions, like “if there was a PR crisis, how would you handle it?”

Review the candidate’s application so you can personalize your questions. And be human! Interviews are nerve-wracking for job candidates, and it can be difficult for you to gauge if someone is a good fit for your company if they’re putting on a performance to impress. Disarm them by being friendly and approachable, and you’ll have a better feel for their personality.

It’s also smart to create a rubric or a tool to assess the interview. This way, you can understand how each interviewee stacks up against what you’re looking for, as well as against other candidates.

Take Your Time Making a Decision

If you’ve evaluated each candidate during the interview process, you should be able to narrow down the list to just the top picks. Here, you’ll want to take both a micro and macro approach to choosing the best person to hire.

Return to the role’s job description and determine how well the candidate fits what you’re looking for. Maybe you assign a point system and look for candidates who are close to 100% in their skills and experience.

Take a step back and consider how good a fit the person would be in your company based on the values you identified earlier. Don’t just go based on a resume and the answers a candidate gave you in the interview. Also, listen to your gut. Did you like this person? Could you see them getting along with team members? Or did you feel like they were just giving you the answers you wanted to hear? 

It’s important to assess not only a candidate’s fit with the company but also with their potential coworkers. If your software development team is a quiet bunch, throwing a loud extrovert into the mix might disrupt productivity. Consider including one or more potential team members in the interview process to get their take on the candidates, since they’ll be the ones working with them.

If you have trouble deciding among a handful of really great candidates, call them in for a second interview.  When they arrive, you might ask each of them to provide more details about their opinion of your company. For example: “What would you change about this company? Where do you see room for improvement? What does your ideal job look like?” This gives the person the opportunity to shine in a way they might not have the first time around.

Offer an Attractive Package

Once you’re ready to make a job offer, make sure what you’re offering is appealing. In today’s marketplace, candidates assess the company as much as the company assesses them. 

Many want not only a competitive salary but also other benefits, such as low-cost health insurance, ample vacation time (just look at the unlimited paid time off trend!), gym memberships, and more.

In addition, job seekers also look for companies that offer opportunities for professional development. If someone excels in this role over a few years, is there an opportunity for advancement? Does your company offer professional development resources, such as paying for college tuition?

You may need to play the negotiation game to win over your top choice, so know how much wiggle room your offer has.

Your Work’s Not Done Yet!

Congratulations. You’ve hired a great employee. Now what? Well, if you want to keep that employee working hard for you for years, you’ll need to start them off on the right foot. 

Create a detailed training plan to ensure that the new hire is given the tools and resources to do their job correctly. Consider pairing them with another employee who can show them the ropes (and that just might be you if your business is new). Check in frequently to see if they have questions and offer encouragement along the way.

After 90 days, consider having an official evaluation where you assess how far the employee has come and make suggestions for improvement. This is also the employee’s opportunity to provide feedback on the onboarding process and make suggestions for the role.

Your company needs great employees to thrive. Take your time and be deliberate in the hiring process, and you’ll attract top talent.