Hiring is a challenge that every business owner encounters as their business grows. At some point, you can’t do anymore as a one-man or woman show and you need to hire the best candidate and build a team so you can keep growing your business.
But hiring the wrong person can be extremely costly in time, money, and frustration.
The wrong employee can lead to:
- stress and tension due to personality conflicts,
- waste of time and money in training someone who doesn’t work out for you,
- loss of morale among your existing employees,
- risk of losing other members of your team,
- a serious reduction in your productivity because you have to go through the hiring and training processes a second (or even third) time.
There are a lot of downsides to hiring the wrong person for your job, so it pays to figure out your hiring process beforehand.
The process I’ve developed for my business has allowed me to build a team of tight-knit and conscientious people who care about their work and get the job done right, and it could do the same for your service business if you adapt it and put it into place for your next hire.
Let’s dive in.
The Hiring Process
First up you need to define your perfect hire. This is someone who:
- has the skill set and qualifications to succeed at the job you’re hiring for,
- will stay on long enough to justify the time and money you will spend on hiring them,
- improves their skills and increases their value to your business,
- has a positive attitude and is willing and able to come up with solutions instead of focusing on just the problems.
Now that you know “who” to hire, you need to define the role they are going to fill. Create a list of tasks the role is required to do in order of importance, and use that information to create a job description.
One of the ways we filter through applicants is what we call the “Star Profile”. On a scale of 1 to 10, your Star Profile is your perfect 10 candidate in terms of education, experience, knowledge, personality, and any other traits you believe are important.
When you’re going through the interview process, you can compare the person to your Star Profile to see how good of a fit they are for your business.
If you don’t find someone good enough, 8 out of 10 let’s say, you keep on interviewing until you do.
Finding Star Players
Most service business owners rely on newspapers or job boards to advertise their positions. While that’s a good start, it’s often not enough to find the best candidates for the position.
You should consider reaching out to your friends and business associates and ask them to refer you to good people when you’re looking to hire.
Leverage your network. Chances are there are great people all around you and a little word of mouth is all you need to land your next Star Player.
You can also create a page on your website detailing the positions you are looking to hire for and let people in your local network know about it.
Hiring someone connected to your network does two things:
1.) it gives a job to someone who lives in your area which might result in more loyalty to your company and a longer-term employee, and
2.) you can usually find out more information about these applicants because they come with a personal recommendation.
For the ad itself, you should include what makes your company worth working besides a paycheck. Just like regular advertising to customers, you should always keep in mind the person on the receiving end is asking themself “what’s in it for me?”
What makes your company unique, or interesting, or fun, or exciting. That could be your team, your process, or the cool perks you offer. There are lots of ways to stand out. What’s yours?
That’s it for now. Next time we’re going to talk about how to interview people so you find the right candidates for the role, while also narrowing down the pool of applicants so you don’t waste your time interviewing the wrong people.
