As your small business grows, you’ll need to think about adding more people. At this stage, it’s crucial you know how to attract employees who will be the right fit for your company.
In this post, we’ll tell you five things you could do to make correct hiring decisions.
1. Skip the usual interview questions
What are your strengths and weaknesses? Where do you see yourself in five years? What is your greatest personal achievement?
These are standard interview questions that have been around for years. Any candidate who’s even half serious about the job would have prepared how to answer them. So the replies you get won’t give you any relevant information.
Instead of sticking to the same old script, think outside of the box. Here are a couple of non-traditional questions you could use:
- If you were a brand, what would be your tagline?
- What’s your unique superpower?
Remember, the idea is to learn more about candidates by getting them to go beyond their prepared answers. And the best way to do that is by throwing in curveball questions prospective employees aren’t ready for.
2. Culture fit is all-important
There are three key factors you need to consider when you’re working on how to attract and retain employees for your organization. The first two are pretty obvious. The candidate should have the required qualifications and work experience. However, many entrepreneurs would say the third factor––the candidate should be a good match for your company’s culture––is even more critical.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast– Peter Drucker, Management Guru.
You must ascertain if the candidate’s values and beliefs align with your organization’s. If they don’t, finding someone else to fill the job may be best. You can train people to use Excel or teach them everything about your products or services, but changing a person’s character is practically impossible.
How will you know if the person you are interviewing will be a cultural fit? Ask questions like these:
- Which is the management style that brings out the best in people?
- What is the ideal work environment?
- What do you do when you have a tight deadline?
- Tell us about somebody who has inspired you.
3. Pick from a pool of interns
Creating an internship program is an excellent way to identify entry-level hires. You get an opportunity to observe the candidates in a real-life setting. Over the internship period, you will get a chance to gauge each intern’s strengths and weaknesses, their level of knowledge, and the way they respond to stressful situations.
Companies across the spectrum have been selecting full-time employees from their pool of interns. And this practice has seen an increase in recent times.
A survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), which gathered data from over 200 large organizations, found that hiring interns has been stepped up across the board. The 2021-22 academic year is expected to see the number of internships companies offer rising by over 22 percent.
Start an internship program if you’ve been trying to figure out how to attract employees. It’s one of the best ways to select the best people.
4. Give the candidate a short task
A candidate may tick all the boxes. The right qualifications? Check. Relevant work experience? Check. Good communicator? Check.
But how can you be sure that the person will meet your expectations in a real work environment?
One way to find out is to assign the candidate a task. It doesn’t need to take hours to do. But try to give an assignment related to the role you are attempting to fill. Monitor the candidate’s response carefully. The quality of the work submitted and the time it takes to complete it will tell you a lot. Additionally, the information you gather is something you would never learn by asking questions at an interview.
5. Trust but verify
Here’s a shocking statistic: 78% of candidates lie during the hiring process.
That seems hard to believe, but a survey conducted by Checkster, a company that provides reference checking software, found that an alarming number of candidates provide companies with incorrect information.
What do candidates lie about? Here’s a partial list of what the Checkster survey found:
- People say they worked longer at a previous company than they did
- They lie about their GPA
- They inflate job titles or achievements
So, don’t take what candidates say at face value. Carry out your own checks to verify their claims.
Hiring for small business growth
Entrepreneurs must learn how to attract and retain employees. If they can recruit high-performing people, they will see improved business performance and, ultimately, an increase in sales and profits.
Consider following some of the recruitment strategies we’ve outlined in this post. It will help you build a talent pool that could propel your company to new heights.
