The one thing that every business relies upon to be successful is the people who work there. Without the right talent on board it's impossible to develop and grow your business in the right way. But finding those who will drive the company to greatness is an extremely hard process, especially when you're a small start up with a lot of vision but usually a limited budget, yet you need to grow your team.
Finding The Right Fit
When you run your own company and you have a million different things to tick off your to-do list each day, it can be hard to find the time to dedicate to proper recruitment. Sifting through huge amounts of applicants and trying to whittle it down to a few who might have the right fit with the company culture and the skills that the role requires can be a time-consuming process. Yes, the option is there to hire a recruitment consultant, but it's never a good idea to outsource the entire process - that way you are much more likely to get a candidate who is right on paper but may not quite fit. You also need to find useful services such as Checkr background check to stop you making any expensive mistakes. So how do you get this crucial process right and ensure the right talent to enable your company to soar to greater heights?
Focus On The Problem
Often, we get hung up on job titles - the one we should give our vacancy, the ones that candidates have on their CV. Yet this is entirely the wrong approach. If you think about, a job title such as 'Marketing Manager' can actually mean a huge amount of things - from hands-on activity at trade shows to acting as a product owner in scrum or working with digital analytics - so the scope to get it wrong is huge. And this is the same with any title you could be hiring for. Instead, it's a far better approach to focus on the problem that needs solving within your business. Map out the requirements that your new employee is going to need to help you solve this issue. Be explicit about pain points and your vision as to how this problem should be tackled. Ask potential recruits about this during the interview, or even set them a practical task tackling an aspect of the matter. This will give you a better understanding of how this person would contribute and what they may be able to accomplish - even when they may not have the exact background you would have expected.
Ask Behavioural Questions
Past experience is always going to be important, but make sure that a good proportion of your interview or pre-screening questions are based around assessing behavioural factors as well. You can use the STAR interview technique to draw out skills and even some psychometric interview evaluations to assess their characteristics. Speak about what aspects of your business they find interesting and where they see themselves adding value and ask for practical examples of similar behaviour in the past.
