How to make the best decisions when hiring prospective employees.
Hiring new employees can be a stressful and overwhelming time for business owners. Both time consuming and costly, finding prospective employees is just the beginning, then comes training and retaining staff.
However, it doesn’t have to be as complicated as you’d think. With the right plan of action, you can avoid a loss and make the process streamlined and efficient. From the search to the interview, key decisions have to be made.
But how do you identify high potential employees? What questions should you ask them? What traits should you be looking for?
These are common questions asked by businesses and the reason why we created this article. This guide will help to get your company up to speed and ready to tackle this hurdle. Let’s take a look.
What Is A Prospective Employee?
When a business is looking for new staff, a prospective employee is a person who has the potential to fill the role. The recruitment team at a company will look for people who would fit the business. They will look at experience, personality, skills and performance to decide who would be best suited.
How Can I Identify High Potential Employees?
Firstly, take a look at your organisation. Are there any members in your current team that stand out from the rest? They may just be the ideal person to fill the role, even to be put forward for the interview. Some more ideas include:
| Communication | By having good communication, you enable a visible team buy-in. Managers will be able to understand and evaluate team members, as well as aid their personal and career development. Without communication, you risk confusing high potential with high performers. |
| Clear guidelines | To set in stone what you’re looking for, there should be clear criteria for the key performance indicators (KPIs), behaviours, experience and achievements you want. This could be utilising objective and reliable methods to assess performance. |
| Examine your pool | Take some time to cross-examine the talent pool to remove any bias from the process. You could use a more detailed process, filtering individual development needs and gaining a better perspective of potential employees. |
What Questions Should I Ask A Prospective Employee?
When it comes to filling a vacancy on your team, some feel the pressure to identify the perfect candidate. They must have the professional experience and skills to help the team grow. So, when it comes to interviews, here are some questions to ask.
What skills and qualities can you bring to this position?
The prospective employee should be able to identify and clarify how their skills will benefit your company. There may be some hidden qualities and abilities that you didn’t know, so this will add to the recruitment process.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Having drive and aspirations is a good quality to have, valuable to all businesses. By having someone on your team that is engaged and has clear goals, you can then help them reach these objectives. Chances are, that if your company grows, they’ll be happy in the long run too.
How would your co-workers describe you?
This gets the prospect to think outside the box. Sure, they know how they see themselves, but this question sheds light on the candidate’s soft skills. Do these skills complement current staff members? Or do you need someone with different skills?
Why do you want to work here?
A common interview question, but one to clarify their understanding of the company. You will quickly get an idea of whether or not they are interested in working for you or not.
What do you know about our company?
You should always allow the interviewee to ask questions. This one allows them to understand the business better. You can also flex some interesting facts and statistics to entice them further.
What Traits Should I Look For When Finding Prospective Employees?
Some certain traits and qualities are beneficial across all businesses. Also, you should be on the lookout for some skills that will be beneficial in the long run. Here are some skills to identify:
| Have a proactive attitude | Does the prospect have a solid track record of accomplishing new things? Try to explore any initiatives that the applicant has undertaken and whether they were successful or not. Did they handle failures and successes well? How did they learn from them? You want employees that are always looking to learn, even from mistakes. |
| Use common sense and good critical judgment | A harder one to look for, but having good judgement and common sense is a valuable trait to have. You see news stories on social media about the staff that have made poor decisions when dealing with a customer. This leads to huge impacts on the company’s reputation. To minimise the risk of these events, try using skill-based interviews or screening methods to identify any red flags. |
| Committed to continuous improvement | Similar to having a pro-active attitude, being able to adapt and improve is crucial. Change is a fact in business, so you want to locate employees that will embrace change and continuous improvement to be one step ahead of the competition. Those who can’t cope with change may stifle your business. |
| People of integrity | Trust is key. Those who lack integrity and ethics won’t be trusted in your organisation, even if they are the most skilled candidate. It is a recipe for disaster and it won’t go down well with your current members of staff. To avoid this, do your due diligence on a potential employee’s reputation. They can cause huge damage to your company, having a knock-on effects in the long term. |
| Ability to develop leaders | You may not be hiring for a formal leadership position. That is okay. You should still be on the lookout for those with leadership potential. Individuals need to have the ability to step up and serve as a leader in various scenarios. This will put you at a competitive advantage against other companies in your industry. The impact will be widespread, helping others in your team to grow and flourish. They will motivate and inspire your team to become the best versions of themselves, leading to improvements across the company. |
How Should I Interview Potential Employees?
There are various methods to consider when interviewing candidates. It will depend on the type of business you have, as well as the screening process you prefer. Let’s take a look at some of them.
Telephone Screening Candidates Before The Job Interview
A telephone interview will give you an overview of the candidate’s qualifications, experience, workplace preferences, and salary needs. Now you can clarify straight away if there are boxes that need ticking, without wasting time or resources on a proper interview.
You will filter out any unlikely candidates, narrowing down your prospects. Also, customised job interview questions can be used to give a brief understanding of who you are dealing with. It can help set the tone for further interviews.
Behavioural Job Interviews
Another method would be to use a behavioural interview. This will help to gather information such as knowledge, skills, and experience. You would begin with standard small talk, asking simple questions to relax the candidate. Then begins the real interview.
This will help to find out the true traits and characteristics of the interviewee, filtering out those who don’t match the qualities you selected as necessary for the success of the role.
Some points to consider are asking the candidate to use examples in the past of when they used particular behaviours relevant to the job. For the best results, try making the candidate unaware of the behaviour the interviewer is verifying.
Assessing Candidates After The Job Interview
There should be a standard format used for each interviewer that assesses each candidate. It should be the same to avoid any bias or mixed results. From the first interview, there should be a few that you’d like to ask back for another meeting.
Make sure to keep these results as a method of evaluating the recruitment process. You can see if this process was successful or if any tweaks need to be made in future interviews. The information should be shared with managers and HR staff to get any feedback too.
We know that identifying talented individuals can be a tricky task. Finding those that have the potential to fill critical roles in the future can feel like an impossible task. However, it is doable when using a structured process.
When approached in the right way, you will save both time and money, leading to enhanced processes for future recruitment. However, there are significant risks of making mistakes and failing. That is okay, as long as you learn and adapt from it.
You have to commit to making this a solid structure, otherwise, you should avoid doing it at all. Remember to look for those with integrity, a proactive attitude and use good critical judgment. These three skills make up a good candidate. Good luck.