Many new hires are chosen based on current knowledge and past experience, but how much of an indicator is the past on future performance and success in your organisation? Failing to consider a few key elements around culture and the fit of new hires in an established business can lead to high staff turnover, repeated recruitment costs and disruption to customer service levels.
Recruitment and staff turnover is one of the most expensive activities for any organisation and a prime area to target to reduce costs and safeguard customer relationships and continuity of service.
Meet employee Expectations
A candidate is interviewing you as much as you are interviewing them. Take time to get to know what motivates your prospective employee and make sure you can meet their requirements in the longer term. If you have an ambitious candidate and no room for development or promotion how will you keep them? If your interviewee is looking for a steady, secure repetitive role and not looking for personal growth, are you prepared to let them continue to do the same work with not much change?
Speculate to accumulate
Take a chance. Technical knowledge can be learned and expanded easily and on the job. Always consider transferable skills, for example, discipline, self-management, relationship building, initiative, problem solving and loyalty. Invest time and effort into encouraging the development of the soft skills and share knowledge freely to facilitate learning.
Complement the team
Many interviewers, are drawn to recruiting people who are most like them. Think carefully about what is missing from your current team and what the new member of staff will bring. Will they bring some enthusiasm to pick up the rest of the team or are they the person who sits in the background, keeping everyone calm? Do they have a specific knowledge or skill which will add value to the current workforce?
Use multiple approaches
Recruiting on the basis of an hour chat with someone in an interview is always a risk. Psychometric testing as an additional method of gaining information about a candidate is a good way to open discussions about someone’s personality and preferences. Use competency based interviewing to encourage the candidate to open up and to explore their approach to different scenarios.
Recruit for your customers
The relationships which your staff members forge with your clients can make a huge difference to customer retention and to repeat custom. Who will your customer like and who will they respond to? Where customers want consistency and continuity, recruit for the longer term and let your employees build those important relationships.
Be Transparent
Don’t promise the world in an interview and not deliver. Be honest with the candidate. If the business has a number of issues and problems, be open and ask how they will help contribute to a solution. If you don’t have the budget for people development, big investment or a bonus culture, then tell the candidate what you can offer. Is it challenge, is the opportunity to turn things around and influence the direction of the business or the chance to work with some really interesting and knowledgeable people?
Getting the selection process right and being honest, builds a huge amount of trust and understanding for your time together in the working environment. It is well worth the investment to save money, heartache and de-motivation in the future.