What you will get from this article:
- Learn how to hire employees strategically
- Access the 3 key questions to ask in the process of hiring employees
- Discover how to identify your own nature, which will help you to better assess potential hires
- Gain the tools needed to classify your business identity
How to hire employees strategically
Hiring employees: Does it strike fear into your heart? You’re not alone. Even some of the most accomplished entrepreneurs and managers have a tough time when it comes to learning how to hire employees. Hiring the wrong people can drain your team’s enthusiasm, productivity and morale while cutting into your bottom line. But with a strategy in hand, you can minimize the chance of error and create a winning team. Your first step is creating a hiring-an-employee checklist to guide your staffing decisions.
The process of hiring employees is one of the biggest (and most expensive) pitfalls for any business looking to build a team that works. A well-known recruiter estimates the cost of bringing on a new employee as roughly $240,000. However, hiring the wrong employee can cost upwards of $840,000. The process of firing someone can be trickier than hiring, so you need to take pause before bringing someone on board. So how do you develop a strategy for hiring employees that will result in team members who will turn your company into an even better place than it was when they started working for you?
No matter how many interviews, tests or evaluations your team devises, if you’re not looking at the right metrics or asking the right questions, you might hire someone who ultimately will leave in a matter of weeks or months. Even worse, you could hire a toxic employee who ultimately erodes your company culture. This will force you to start the search all over again and might even involve some damage control that wastes time, money and human resources.
Here we look at how to hire employees effectively and how to ensure you get the right staff in the right places. It breaks down to just three parts: Can Do, Will Do and Team Fit.
Hiring employees: The logic behind Can Do/Will Do/Team Fit
When you’re ready to add to your team, knowing how to hire employees to work for your company is crucial. Many business owners have no idea how to employ an effective process for hiring employees. You’re worried that you’ll bring someone on board who doesn’t have the necessary skills for the job or isn’t a good cultural fit, but that must not be your focus. It’s not the person you hire that destroys a company in the long run – it’s the person you fail to fire.
The wrong people can take an exceptional product or service and destroy it. Have you ever gone to an incredible restaurant where you received terrible service? Think of that server at the five-star restaurant who basically ignored you during the entire meal; even if you still enjoyed incredible food, the experience was ruined by your rude waiter and you most likely won’t be back.
On the flip side, hiring employees who excel at their jobs can take a mediocre company, product or service and make it amazing. This is why understanding how to hire employees is a skill that sets great companies apart from the rest and makes them talkably different. The same logic applies to intimate relationships and friendships – it’s also the reason why so many of us go through multiple partners and friend groups throughout our lives. You need to select the right people and have them in your life at the right time. And whether it’s within your romantic relationship or a potential employee, before you bring someone new into your life, you need to learn how to recognize a good fit – and this all starts with knowing the right questions to ask. Good questions can lead to insights and breakthroughs within yourself and can also lead to uncovering crucial details about potential employees.
Marketing expert Jay Abraham suggests employing “Socratic interviewing,” a strategy for hiring employees that involves asking potential hires questions no one has ever asked them before. These questions tell you more about them as unique individuals and not only reveal their working style, but it also makes them feel valued as people and not just potential employees. If you listen deeply to their answers, you can also learn a lot – not just about them, but about the position you’re hiring for, their perspective on your industry and a number of other topics. According to Jay, giving them the chance to talk deeply is a great gift – it’s rare that a potential employer acknowledges them on this level. With the Socratic interviewing process, you’ll build a team of raving fan employees who will do a lot of your recruiting for you.
Hiring an employee: Checklist questions
Obviously you’ll have to ask some practical questions to determine if the person you’re interviewing is a good fit. When hiring an employee, checklist questions aligned with the Can Do/Will Do/Team Fit model will provide all the information you need to make strategic staffing decisions. When you’re in the process of hiring an employee, checklist the following items.
Question 1: Can this position be outsourced?
Before you even begin recruiting new hires, determining the positions they will fill is a critical first step. If your first hires tank, you’re back at square one before your hiring process even got off the ground. When you’re strategic about it, outsourcing is an excellent strategy for delegating so you don’t wear yourself or your team too thin – or hire for an unnecessary position.
To outsource your company’s work effectively, first determine what duties and outcomes must happen on a regular basis, from streamlining operations to increasing your sales. Then, determine the skills, abilities, assets and weaknesses of your team and yourself. With this information in place, you’re able to determine who’s best suited to what task. From there, hiring employees becomes a matter of filling in the gaps. And when you understand what the position you’re hiring for entails, you’re able to create a compensation package that will attract rockstar talent.
Question 2: Does their personality match their résumé?
Part of learning how to hire employees is discerning whether someone’s real-life personality matches their on-paper persona. A potential employee who looks great on paper but doesn’t live up to that persona is not likely to last long. Even if a candidate has years of experience in the position you’re hiring for, if they’re not equipped to take on the interpersonal work of fitting into your company’s culture, you’ll be restarting your hiring process soon. Use your own interpersonal skills to build rapport and create connections with potential hires so you can discern what’s real from what’s manufactured.
Question 3: Can they do the job?
Usually looking at a résumé and reviewing a person’s background tells you if someone has the experience needed to perform any given job – that part’s straightforward. If they truly have the skill sets needed, this question can be answered quickly when hiring employees. Can they perform the task at hand? And if the person doesn’t have the right skill set already, ask yourself, can they learn it – or will they struggle to understand and execute effectively? More importantly, does your company have the time and resources to invest in getting this person up to speed? You might be more likely to invest in training someone who you see as a great cultural fit for your organization, regardless of their past experience.
There’s much more to learning how to hire employees than just knowing if the potential employee can complete the necessary tasks. When you’re considering hiring an employee, checklist questions must also uncover their fit in the long term.
Question 4: Will they do the job well long-term?
When it comes to how to hire employees who are right for your company, the question of their long-term fit becomes a bit more complex. After all, you can’t know for sure what the future holds. But don’t spend too much time worrying about a future you can’t control – you just need to know if this person seems like someone who will be committed to your brand for the long haul. To figure this answer out, you need to understand what the person’s goals are as well as their true nature. If the job feeds that nature, chances are they’ll stick around. That’s the secret to hiring employees who will stick around for the long haul.
For example, can an introverted person serve as an effective salesperson? Of course. Will they sell effectively long term? No. Why? Because people’s natures rarely change. When you find a position where a person’s nature is rewarded by the job itself and they possess the necessary skills, you’re well on your way to making a good hire – but the prospective employee needs to pass the final question to really fit into your hire strategy. You must learn how to hire employees who fit your company culture like hand-in-glove.
Question 5: Are they the right team fit?
Many companies have vague wording or concepts about what “team fit” means, but it’s important to dig a little deeper when it comes to your process for hiring employees. At its base, fit comes from a person meshing well enough with the rest of the department or business at large to be a valuable contributor and productive asset to the whole. You want to hire someone who is engaged with not only the tasks associated with their role, but someone who can seamlessly integrate into the social aspect of your office as well. Having variety is crucial for creating a cross-functional team, but if the person drags down the whole company because of their dramatically different personality, habits or viewpoints, they’re not a fit. When it comes to mastering how to hire employees, you must know that person’s career goals for the position.
Take how Tony has changed the way he hires his personal assistants. Over the years he found that if he went to a Hollywood-based association of personal assistants and hired someone, many of them did not last very long. The reason? Their real goal was not to be a personal assistant. Their real goal was to become an actor, actress, director or writer of TV or films. They loved the job because his network connected them with a lot of important people. They did the job, but they did not perform well or stick around long term because ultimately their goals were different than what the job was about.
Ask prospective employees where they see themselves in five, 10 or even 20 years. What does their response tell you about their priorities? Do these values align with the nature of your business? This is also the step in the process of hiring employees where Jay suggests you encourage your potential hire to ask questions as well. If they aren’t asking lots of insightful questions about your organization, your company vision and how they fit into the future plans of the company, they may not be a good fit. Jay will even give his potential hires good questions to ask if they can’t come up with them on their own. He explains he does this because hiring the right person is not a one-way street. You should be looking to build a relationship with your new hire and it’s important for both of you to be as honest as possible about your goals, values and projected future.
Determining fit is a critical component of creating a hiring-an-employee checklist that helps your company soar. If you don’t start the relationship off on the right foot, it’s likely your new team member will be unhappy in the position and will not be effective in helping you deliver the ultimate customer experience.
Knowing how to hire employees starts with knowing yourself
Of course, evaluating someone else becomes even more difficult if you have no sense of your own nature and patterns. How can you think about creating an effective process for hiring employees if you’re unclear of how you work yourself? Learn about what excites people and understand what inherently drives you. This is the root of hiring strategically. What’s also crucial is understanding business identity types that are different than your own – all are key components of becoming an effective leader. And when you’re a better leader, you become better able to recognize the potential and drive in others.
Knowing if you’ve hired the right person
A strategy for learning how to hire employees does not stop after that person has accepted your job offer. There are plenty of employees who looked great on paper and in the job interview then fail to be good additions to your company. The key is to find out as soon as possible if your new hire was a good choice.
You’ll be incredibly effective at hiring employees when you start getting immediate information and feedback about how your new hires are doing in their positions. At the end of each business day, ask your new employees to send you an email that details the following three pieces of information:
1. What they did that day and the results they got
2. Any problems or challenges they faced
3. Questions they have for you
Not only does this help you develop a quick connection with your new team member, but it also helps you identify red flags early on and gives you a better read on the office environment in general. It can also help you identify your new hire’s communication style, which will assist you in talking to them in the future. As part of your hiring process, ask your new team member to send this email every day for the first 30 days. This will help you see if you’ve hired a superstar or if you need to cut your losses and find a better fit.
Hiring employees who will fit in with your company should be at the top of your list when it comes to being a business owner. When you know how to ask the right questions and develop a good strategy for determining if they’re the right fit, you can strengthen your company and build a stronger team.
Learning how to hire employees effectively is one of the most powerful moves you can make for your business and brand. Tony Robbins’ free audio on making tough decisions is your resource for getting to the bottom of who to hire for your company’s success. With the right information and support, hiring employees is an empowering process that takes your company to the next level.
Ready to better understand the personalities of your team?
Once you and your employees complete Tony’s DISC assessment, you will gain a better understanding of the individual your team needs. Take steps towards hiring the right person for your company today.