When you bring a new person into your organization, you need to make sure that he or she is going to be a good fit. While an interview can help you get a feel for a job candidate, there may be other tools that you can use to ensure that the person chosen for the job is the best person for that position. How can you make better hiring decisions for your business?
Don’t Be Afraid to Use Job Boards
Using job boards such as Start Jobs can help you expand your pool of available job candidates. You can increase the odds of finding capable workers by using targeted keywords in the listing. The more specific you are about what the company does and what the job entails, the easier it will be to find the right workers.
Prior Performance Should Not Be Ignored
If an individual has a long gap in their job history that he or she cannot explain, that person may not be motivated to work hard. If an individual has not held a management position in the past or has few skills or accomplishments listed on his or her resume, it may be a sign that this person doesn’t care about professional growth or will start jobs and not finish them. While prior performance is never a guarantee of future performance, it should not be ignored regardless of how well a candidate interviews.
Relevant Work Experience Should Mean More Than a College Degree
These days, a college degree simply means that an individual passed his or her courses and paid the tuition on time. As almost everyone under the age of 30 has a degree, an employer should look at the relevant work experience that an individual has. Look for internships, time spent performing core job duties or any other evidence that an applicant has some sort of experience doing the job in the past. When interviewing an older worker, this may be even more important as you may pass up a hard working candidate simply because they didn’t pay $50,000 for a piece of paper.
Who Will Vouch for This Person?
A potential job candidate should have at least one person who will vouch for their character. While a trusted name in the industry or within the company is always preferable, any professional contact will do as long as that person is reliable. Although a candidate may perform better or worse than he or she did for that reference, you can feel better knowing that this person has performed well in the past.
Does This Person Have an Online or Social Media Presence?
An individual who has a blog or a lot of followers on Twitter probably has something meaningful to say or has some clout with his or her followers. This can be a boon for your company because it means that you have someone who can lead others, sell to customers or otherwise promote the company in a positive light. In the long run, this could be used to establish relationships with other companies or make it easier to win new investments or government contracts.
There is no magic bullet when it comes to hiring the perfect employee. All you can do is get as much information as possible when making a hiring decision. However, you will generally make better decisions by looking at what the candidate has accomplished in the past, how many contacts this person has and if the candidate has shown any ability to promote the company to a large audience.
