Many beginning business owners have a hard time hiring good employees because it is a new experience. Remember the interview process when you just had to prepare a resume and go for an interview? Well now you’re on the other side of the coin and you have to look at numerous resumes all saying similar things. How can you pick from so many options? Well here are some steps to hiring an employee for your business and raising them to be a longtime employee. Because the last thing you want to do is go through this monotonous process again.
Step 1: Place your ads for your job opening in a newspaper or magazine that is similar to the demographic to your customers. While doing this, make sure to be clear in what you are looking for in a particular candidate. This will allow you to limit the amount of resumes running through your office. This saves you time and the future employee’s time.
Step 2: Sifting through the resumes is a time consuming process, but first look them over for grammatical errors and the candidates objective if hired. There should be no grammatical errors, if there are errors then they do not take your company serious enough. The objective stated should match with your company’s culture and what you want out of an employee.
Step 3: Get in touch with the candidates to set up interviews. Make sure you give them a time gap of how long the interview should take and the expected attire. Helping the candidates before the interview will allow them to relax a bit and see how they would work on a daily basis in your company.
Step 4: The Interview. The interview should be a good opportunity for the employee to discuss their experiences and why they can help your company. You want to make sure you hear their future goals in life. This will allow you to narrow down if this person wants to keep working for you in the future or if you’re just a stepping-stone. Next, make sure they ask about your company or have some knowledge about what you do. If they don’t know then they most likely don’t know what they are truly stepping into. Also, make sure to ask if they are interviewing with other companies. If this candidate is real good, he or she could be receiving offers from your competitors. This could cause problems in the future when giving them an offer.
Step 5: Making the offer to the right candidate. The candidate should be a compliment to you and your company. If you’re a small business you also want to make sure that the candidate brings something to the table that you can’t offer. It is always key to hire people that are smarter than you, but want to work for you to help the company reach its goals. Once you figure out that this is the candidate you want make sure you call them and let them know that they have been selected and you would like to make a formal offer. It is usually better to get them in person so you can read them better to make the offer.
Step 6: Dealmaker. Before making the deal make sure to look up the standard salary range for this position in the market and what benefits come with the territory. Then when you come to the table I would generally ask them what they are expecting to receive. Most people short change themselves, which makes your job easier to negotiate. If this is a top-notch employee don’t be afraid to offer a signing bonus similar to Major League teams. This may help seal the deal. Once an agreement is made get the paperwork signed the same day. You don’t want this deal to walk similar to a sales deal walking off the floor.
Step 7: Welcoming the employee. A good idea after the deal is signed is to take this employee out for a celebration dinner. The hardest thing for an employee is trying to get comfortable with a new organization. This will also allow you to build a relationship with the employee on a more personal basis.
The interview process is just as hard for the interviewer as the interviewee. Remember that you want somebody that is going to get along with the current employees and has valuable knowledge in fields where your company needs to improve upon. You want your new employee to help expand growth for your company, not just maintain the current growth. Nobody every said the process was ever easy for either party, but sticking to an outline sure makes it easier.
