4 steps to hiring with confidence.
Sometimes you need to slow down to speed up.
Rushing through the hiring process leads to wasted time later on. Maybe you hire and train the wrong person, and they don’t last long. Or you realize too late that the role you hired for wasn’t what your team needed. Or you spin your wheels for months because you didn’t have a training plan ready.
And I get it – when you’re swamped, you might feel like you just need another set of hands! Hiring slowly is for mega corps with whole HR departments, not scrappy family-run businesses – isn’t it?
Hiring slowly doesn’t mean drowning in layers of HR bureaucracy. It just means you start the process way before you’re ready to make an offer. Here are four key documents you can prepare days, weeks, or even months in advance of posting your job, so you can extend an offer letter confident you’ve made the best decision.
“Employees are a company’s greatest asset. They’re your competitive advantage.” – Anne M. Mulachy, (Former CEO, Xerox)
“The cost of a bad hire is 15x his or her annual salary… so it’s important to get the recruiting and selection process right.” – Verne Harnish, Scaling Up
1 – Key Results
Imagine your new hire has been with you for 3 months, 6 months, or a full year. What impact will they have they had on the business at each stage?
If they’re in sales, this might be directly tied to their outcomes, like new accounts opened and revenue generated. If they’re in a customer service role, it might be an increase in customer satisfaction scores or positive Google reviews. In a technical role, it could be the tasks they can handle independently, getting them off your plate completely.
The more clearly you can visualize the actions and results of a top performer (e.g. someone in the top 10% of candidates you can afford), the easier the process of finding them will become.
2 – Job Descriptions
Most small businesses don’t have up to date job descriptions, and it’s a missed opportunity to communicate clear expectations for each team member. Before you post the job ad, the next step is to write their detailed job description.
And by the way, if you don’t already have job descriptions for yourself, any partners, or the team you have in place already, that’s a great place to start. For each person, draft a short summary of why the job exists (its core purpose), the key results or outcomes they are responsible for and how they’re measured, and the specific skills, traits, and competencies that are necessary to be successful in the role.
For your new hire, you’ll set them up for success from their first day by knowing what their expected results are, how you’ll measure their success, and how they fit into the bigger picture of the business you’re building.
3 – Evaluation and Screening
With your key results and job description in hand, you’re ready to think about how you’ll evaluate candidates – what will you screen for, and how? What questions will you ask in an interview?
For each of the skills, competencies, and character traits you’re looking for, think about how you’ll evaluate candidates. How will you narrow the field, starting with the non-negotiable skills and character traits a top performer must have?
Remember that technical skills are relatively easy to screen for, but character traits determine culture fit. Many interviewers over-index on technical skills – and live with regret.
4 – Job Ad
If you slowed down enough to complete steps 1-3, step 4 is a slam dunk.
Think of your job ad as a marketing exercise, where the target audience is your ideal candidate. What will appeal to them about working with you? What will they love most about this job and your company?
Describe the person you’re looking for in plain language. A great job ad screens out anyone who isn’t a fit, so don’t worry about having broad appeal (unless you relish sifting through a stack of unremarkable resumes). Clear and specific beats vague and general.
Sure, this is all a lot of work. But the total cost of a poor hire is not just their salary. Factor in missed opportunities, team cohesion, your company’s reputation, and your valuable time and the total cost is huge, making it critical to get it right.
By doing the heavy lifting in advance, you can dramatically increase the odds of adding a star to your team.
This Week’s Takeaway
If you ask someone complaining that “no one wants to work anymore” how they prepared to hire, they’ll probably tell you they stuck a job post online and hoped for the best.
But isn’t it possible that great people don’t want to work for average managers?
Following these four steps will help you become the kind of boss your industry’s top performers actually want to work for.
Up Next – ActionCLUB: The Follow-Up Formula
Join the local business community in networking, learning, and pushing each other to excel on Friday, April 17th from 10-1 for my next in-person get-together, at ActionCLUB.
This month we’ll be discussing tactical, actionable insights and tools on how to build a sales process that closes, without feeling pushy.
Details
- Friday April 17th, 10am-1pm
- Located at Idea Mississauga, Square One
- Interactive session: “The Follow-Up Formula”
- Featuring table discussions & a networking lunch with local entrepreneurs
The Art of Spending Money: By Morgan Housel
The Art of Spending Money is a reflective take on a topic many of us assume we’ve already figured out. Morgan Housel shifts the focus away from tactics and toward mindset, exploring how our expectations, identity, and definitions of “enough” quietly drive our financial choices. It brings a welcome reminder that spending well often begins with clearer self-awareness and not just better spreadsheets.
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