Hiring employees – How you choose the right ones (part 2)

Let’s revisit the best way to reveal an applicant’s genuine attitude. Rule number 3: Meet interesting candidates several times and give them various tasks. You can’t get to know someone solely on the basis of one interview over the phone and a subsequent meeting in person. You need a multilevel selection procedure. Ask the interesting candidates to come and work for a few hours on a trial basis so they can get to know their future tasks and you can assess how they approach them. Organise a casual meeting for coffee with current colleagues and potential candidates then listen to your colleagues’ impression of the candidate afterwards. The more you meet up with the candidate, the more relaxed the atmosphere becomes. This will make it easier for you to really understand the applicant’s genuine attitude. To meet someone repeatedly at different times of the day also prevents you from hastily judging him or her, just because he or she may have had an especially good or bad day the last time you met.

Let’s think about the second problem causing difficulties for companies and managers to find the right employees. Do you spend enough time thinking about how you describe a job to an applicant? Unfortunately, the job description given by managers is often not very appealing because they have the wrong attitude towards it. When you are looking to hire, it is often just because you can no longer manage everything by yourself or there are certain assignments you are not qualified to undertake, or are not enjoyable. Unfortunately, the applicants realise this more often than and it can be apparent when a future boss talks about assignments, that they either do not like, do not understand or does not have the time for.

The applicant will either get the impression that his future area of practice is not very interesting or important, or the unpleasant feeling that the boss will continue to want a say in all matters and doesn’t want to hand over the responsibility entirely. All of this doesn’t help to sell a job. For starters, you have to recognise why the job you are offering is a great one. You have to see what can be achieved in the future position and how influential the future post will be. It is best if you can convey credibly that you understand the vacancy as a key position that you yourself find extremely interesting, but you lack the expertise and of course the time to do it yourself. Always remember that you want to attract people who are looking for a real assignment. Of course you have to offer them one as well.

Lets be honest. Of course you won’t be able to avoid making one or two bad choices in recruiting new employees. This is not a problem if you are honest to yourself and don’t shut down the recruiting process as soon as the new employee starts. Otherwise, you could end up in the classic cycle of discontent which is hard to break at a certain point. After the recruitment the probation period starts. At the end of the probation period you will discover that the employee has certain weaknesses but he will remain in the company. The probation period isn’t very long and the new employee will hopefully ‘learn the ropes’ during this period. Besides, you don’t want to start over with a lengthy recruitment process.  If, after two years the performance is still not convincing, but you have grown used to the employee and they have acquired knowledge that you would have to tediously teach a new employee anyway… You get the idea where this is going. Don’t be afraid to lay off employees who don’t convince you, as this can have far-reaching consequences for both you and your capable and motivated colleagues.

Do yourself a favor and understand the search for new employees as a permanent task that is never complete and is always present. As soon as somebody crosses your path whose eyes start to glow when you tell them about your company and the tasks of your employees, hold on to them!