How Do You Hire Employees?

Employees are a key asset of your business. Without good employees, you cannot have a good business. Many times businesses rush in to hire the first person they find and end up regretting the quick hire latter. Finding good employees is work and takes time but is critical in the success of your company.

This past month I have been working with a company helping them hire a high level person for their company. It is our hope that this employee will actually be able to run the company as the owners start taking time away from their business and get their business ready to sell at some time in the future.

As we started this process, for this company, we had to start at the very beginning. I found out they had no job descriptions and no current employee manual. We decided to start with the employee manual. The fastest way to write a new manual is to buy software that helps you write the manual. I would highly recommend Policies Now as a very easy to use and quick way to get a Employee Manual in place. We have now got a preliminary Employee Manual in place. I also recommend showing the manual to your lawyer to make sure that what you have in your manual is legal.

Next we are going to create job descriptions. I am going to again suggest the same route as before to create job descriptions- that is to buy software that will help you create legal job descriptions. The same company that created Policies Now created Descriptions Now. Again it is quite easy to use and will help get legal job descriptions in place quickly.

Now that we have a job description, we can actually advertise for the employee we want. The best place in our state (Minnesota ) to advertise is www.minnesotaworks.net. This is FREE first of all and all employees that are laid off are shown how to find jobs on this site. We have put jobs out on this site and have had a person hired within 4 hours!!! Other places to advertise are your local and regional papers. If the job is unique, you may put ads in trade association papers or journals also. Make sure you also network with other businesses and people you know letting them know that you are looking for this type of employee. Many times networking is the best source to find employees.

When you advertise, you get many applications. You need to sort out the applicants. You will quickly be able to see those that simply do not have the qualifications for the job you have to offer. You get all of these applicants because those looking for a job can easily just copy their resume and send it to you. Unfortunately that is not a good way for them to get a job .

Now that we have narrowed the applicants down, we need to interview our list of candidates. I would narrow the list to 4-8 applicants. I would suggest 12-15 behavioral interview questions. Behavioral based interviewing is interviewing based on discovering how the interviewee acted in specific employment-related situations or they would react. Here is a web site that has dozens of behavioral questions. http://blog.emurse.com/2007/05/21/complete-list-of-behavioral-interview-questions. Pick 12 -15 questions. Ask the same questions to every applicant. I have had good success with give the candidate a score of 1-10 on each of the questions and then totaling the scores at the end of the interview. Naturally your score on each question is very subjective, but it is your judgment on how you want them to answer the questions. Be careful not to ask the questions you CAN NOT ask. Some of these questions deal with religion, nationality, age, marital and family situation, or health. What you can do is ask them to tell you about themselves and many times they will volunteer this information.

There are a lot of good people out there today to hire. Best of luck!!!!  Duane Hoversten, BizCoachPlus.com