Learn how to find top team players.
The success of your business as it grows will partly depend on you hiring “A” players in all the key positions.
Hiring staff doesn’t need to be complicated – it’s a case of knowing who you need, using your marketing skills to attract them and then a filtering process to save time and effort in selecting the right one. We take you through it below.
Know Who You Are Looking For
If you have mapped out your business and broken it down into key systems and processes you should be able to clearly identify the skills and talents you are looking for in a new team member; what will make them an “A” player?
Also, think about the type of personality that will “fit” with your business – then you are well on the way to deciding on exactly who you are looking for. This is a key stage that all the rest of the hiring process hinges on.
Write The Ad
This is where your sales and marketing skills enter the fray – they’re never far away in business!
You need to hook people and make them want to read your ad, so make it high impact for the type of people you are trying to attract. This means you need to talk to the right people in their language– which is why identifying them first (see above) is so important.
Think about what is important to the people you are targeting; for example, video makers usually want their work to be seen around the world and writers want their work published – so you can play on these desires in your ad, to hook them.
Advertise The Position
This is where you decide where to advertise the position; it may be on several online sites like Seek and offline as well.
Run A Questionnaire
Rather than asking applicants to send resumes immediately why not ask them to fill in an online questionnaire?
This helps to weed out the non-serious applicants because some will not go to the trouble of filling anything in and others will miss questions, so they are probably not “A” players in any case. This saves time wading through resumes of people who wouldn’t get the job anyway.
Pre-Screen Resumes
After we sift through the questionnaires, we can request the resumes of our favoured applicants; pre-screen them and further whittle them down to a group of strong applicants. You can use the resumes to check important things like background and experience.
Task To Complete
A great way to check someone’s communication skills, ability to follow instructions and creativity is to give them a small task to complete; this allows you to see them “in action.”
Let’s face it – if they have little attention to detail in a task like this, there is little hope that they will succeed for you doing the “real” work your business needs.
The Interview
We’ve found the Top Grading style of interview, written about by Brad Smart, is the best method. We focus on asking the applicant about their past work experiences and look for recurring themes and patterns.
It’s best to have two people conducting the interview – one to ask the questions and another to write down the key points of the answers.
What we have presented above is a very effective filtering process to help you in hiring “A” players for your business. Start ups and growing businesses alike will find many more useful tips such as these in the Competition Crusher workshop available for FREE when you click here.
