HR & Staffing

The Importance of Hiring the Right People

Written by Neil White

When it comes to the question of what gives your team its identity, the most accurate answer is the people in your employ. 

You see, your staff are more responsible for the productivity of your enterprise, than your business model, your equipment and even your leadership. 

Sure, all of these factors serve as powerful enhancers but without the core that is your manpower, they wouldn’t be able to make a difference on their own.

This is why it’s so important for HR to hire the right people. 

Willingness to invest effort

The first thing every employer needs to be aware of is Price’s law of productivity. According to Price, only the square root of people in your employ are doing half of all the work.

The main reason why this happens can be told through the story of four people Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. When there’s an important job that anybody can do, everybody is certain that somebody else will do it and the end result is usually that nobody does what anybody could have done. 

Therefore, in order to have a fully-productive staff, you need to hire people who don’t have this kind of mindset. In other words, you need to hire someone who takes full responsibility for their own work.

Long-term growth

As a small business, you won’t be in a scenario where you can hire experts right away, which means that you’ll have a longer route ahead of you. Instead of hiring experts, you need to hire those who show a lot of potential and help them grow into professionals you need. 

For this to work, you need to find someone who is willing to grow, self-improve and take responsibility. In other words, you need people who are both capable and ambitious. Once you have these people in your employ, you can look for webinars and workshops available for your staff to attend and online courses that they should enrol in. 

Different people have different skills and personalities

The truth is that no matter the effort, there are some people who are just better at certain jobs. For instance, there are tasks that require creativity and no matter how much hard work one decides to invest, they might fail to achieve something that comes with ease to their gifted coworker. Salespeople need to be charismatic, while customer service representatives need to be empathetic and so on.

In other words, by watching out for these characteristics when hiring, you’ll create a much more efficient team. Also, remember that introverts are some of the best potential employees out there, but unfortunately, they may not be the ones to ace job interviews. Other than this, finding potential hires amongst people who have a disability is also a trend that yields a great ROI. This is why it might be worth your while to check out platforms like PROVIDERplus and see how you can integrate this principle into your own business model.

Loyalty

The problem with these kinds of people lies in the fact that they might not decide to stay in your employ for long. 

The first step to determine their motivation is to have a serious conversation with them and ask where they see themselves in five years.

When hiring you should also check out their employment history and try to figure out an average period of time that they tend to stay in one’s employ for. Still, even this is not a 100 percent reliable method without all the context. .

The issue of trust

When it comes to the safety of your assets and resources, the truth is that employee theft is incredibly hard to diagnose. First of all, these are the people who already have access to items in question, which means that you won’t have any signs of unauthorised entry and the only way to diagnose the theft is to regularly check your inventory. 

Your employees might also avoid giving you a heads up, due to the fact that:

A) they too are engaged in suspicious activities 

Or

B) simply don’t want to be whistle blowers. 

By being careful during the hiring vetting process, as well as contacting their previous employers, you’ll do a much better job at avoiding these problems.

In conclusion

In the very end, what you need to understand is that your people skills can only get you so far. 

There’s only so much that motivation and adequate equipment can do, the rest is on the individual in your employ. 

This is why a proper hiring process is so important to ensure that you have the right people by your side .

Only this way will you be able to make a difference in the competitive business world.

 

“The opinions expressed by BizWitty Contributors are their own, not those of BizCover and should not be relied upon in place of appropriate professional advice. Please read our full disclaimer."

About the author

Neil White

Neil White is an HR Specialist from Sydney. Neil has worked in HR for over 10 years in multiple companies all over Australia. He's always been interested in people which is why the part of his job he particularly enjoys is employee relations.