Top 10 Hiring Tips
By Greta Kauffman
President and Founder, Target-Teams

Nothing is more important, or can have greater impact than the people you hire. A hiring mistake can literally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and be magnified over the entire organization, or it can be the beginning of massive success. A bad hire at a senior level in critical areas, at critical times, can even ruin a company. Yet done right a good hire can make up for a lot of other issues and drive success.

The Tips:

  1. Spend sufficient time thinking and planning before starting the hiring process. Recruit only after you know exactly the skills, values, background and education you need for your open position.
     
  2. Track your annual cost of turnover. This will help you understand the cost of losing excellent employees at your firm. It can help you to justify the use of hiring tools to help you reduce the incidence of hiring mistakes.
     
  3. Maximize your referral network. People you know and trust can yield incredible referrals. To maximize your referral network use every means possible to publicize your open positions. Focus as much attention on your referral network as you do on placing ads and engaging with recruiters.
     
  4. Have special “recruitment” cards made up that you (and other select people in your business) can pass out to people you meet who impress you.
     
  5. Consider conducting a “Hiring Seminar” as the first step in your hiring process. This can be an excellent use of your time to begin funneling large numbers of applicants into your hiring funnel.
     
  6. Timing is everything. Make a decision on a candidate in a timely manner. Multiple companies usually court excellent candidates. Don’t lose an excellent candidate because it took you too long to make up your mind or assemble your offer.
     
  7. Have a written recruitment and hiring system. Without a written system you don’t have a system. Great companies have a Hiring System.
     
  8. Send rejection letters to every candidate that is not selected. It is courteous. Additionally, you never know if you may need to hire them if your first hire doesn’t work out. You might also find them in a position to help you make a sale. Fate is strange.
     
  9. Use scientifically validated hiring solutions (validated for hiring and candidate selection) as a screening tool. There is incredible technology available which can help you to eliminate a large percentage of the hiring mistakes you make.
     
  10. See #9. People use "dating behavior" during interviews. You will not see the “real” candidate in an interviewing situation. The candidate will focus on saying, acting, dressing and playing the part of the ideal employee. They are masking their "natural" behavior. Assessment solutions, used during the hiring process, allow you to remove the mask and ascertain with a high degree of accuracy who the candidate really is.
     

Greta Kauffman is President & Founder of Target Teams. Target Teams helps companies select their key employees using sophisticated behavioral and values assessments. These assessments help you determine if the candidate is the right person for the job. Greta has over 21 years of business experience, focusing on hiring and candidate selection, sales, marketing and management from some of the world's most successful companies including Lotus Development Corporation, Netscape Communications and Cisco Systems.

Greta can be reached at greta@target-teams.com

   
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