When a business becomes profitable, its success is credited to the founder, the CEO, or the President. For example, when you hear of Amazon, you think of Jeff Bezos. Even though he passed away 13 years ago, people still think of Steve Jobs when they see Apple.
While these iconic entrepreneurs deserve credit, the immense contribution of the talented people who helped build Amazon and Apple is often overlooked. You can’t run a business alone.
Bezos needed warehouse managers, logistics experts, forklift drivers, purchasing managers, package inspectors, inventory clerks, material handlers, delivery drivers, warehouse management systems analysts, and other skills to keep the Amazon machine running smoothly.
Jobs needed network security engineers, senior science data managers, software engineers, business process managers, supply chain managers, data engineers, solutions product managers, logistics officers, retail supply planners, and others with the skills to drive new innovations.
Both Apple and Amazon needed salespeople, accountants, human resource managers, marketing experts, and graphic designers to help organize and provide structure to the businesses.
You need people—not just ordinary people but talented people who are willing to be led and to lead.
Bezos and Jobs became successful because they were brilliant business leaders who knew how and where to find talent for their companies. Finding talent isn’t proprietary to Amazon, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, and Alphabet.
There are small businesses in your city or neighborhood that have flourished over the last few years. These businesses could have a physical location or be run remotely from home.
However, achieving the growth stage would be impossible without the help of full-time employees or remote workers.
We won’t tell you to change your current hiring approach. Instead, we will share seven principles you can adopt to help you find the right talent for your business.
1. Relax the Standards
A resume summarizes a job applicant’s qualifications and aims to attract the attention of human resources. Job applicants spend hours sprucing up their resumes, and some pay experts to write them.
Job applicants often describe themselves in their resumes as “hardworking,” “disciplined,” and “dedicated.”
But how would you know?
Anyone can describe himself as “hardworking,” “disciplined,” and “dedicated.” The only way to find out is to hire them. You might realize the product wasn’t as good as advertised.
A resume is simply a marketing tool for job seekers. Its contents are tailor-made to fit the job requirements. The resume won’t tell you if you’re hiring the right person.
Implementing behavioral-based pre-screening methods such as DISC and other HR tools can help you uncover the person behind the resume.
DISC is a tool that identifies a person’s core personality or behavioral trait. The DISC acronym stands for the four behavioral traits:
- D – Dominance; focused on accomplishing results that impact the bottom line.
- I – Influence; open-minded and focused on building relationships.
- S – Steadiness; focused on consistency and tends to promote cooperation.
- C – Conscientious; detail-oriented, focused on maintaining quality.
DISC is not a new process. It has undergone numerous iterations over the last few decades. While newer and more innovative behavioral-based HR tools have been introduced, DISC remains an effective pre-screening tool.
Other pre-screening software can be used for the hiring process. Some popular HR solutions in the market are TestGorilla, WizeHire, Vervoe, DevSkiller Talent Score, and VidCruiter.
Instead of putting out a job ad, looking through your 201 files, or scouring social media sites like LinkedIn, why don’t you assess your contacts or ask for recommendations from trusted associates?
You might have someone in your contacts list who fits the bill. He might be someone from your previous work or a friend you’ve done business with.
Surely, your friends and trusted associates from the industry have your best interests in mind. They won’t risk their reputation by referring someone who isn’t qualified.
You can also participate in job fairs, trade conventions, and networking events. The environment on these occasions isn’t formal. People are more relaxed and sociable. They won’t be as guarded compared to a job interview.
2. Align Your Long-Term Business Goals
Before you ask the candidate where he sees himself in five years, why don’t you ask yourself the same question? Hire talent with the future in mind. Align the long-term goals of your business with those of the job candidate.
You don’t want to hire an employee with only the next six months of business in mind. When building your team, always consider the long term.
What are your business goals in the next five or ten years?
If you’re in retail, do you plan to export your products to another region? If so, you want to hire someone with experience in international trade, a background in Economics, knowledge of export documentation, and an expert in Supply Chain and Logistics management.
Personality-wise, the ideal candidate must be adaptable to different situations, have critical-thinking skills, be a good conversationalist, be articulate, and possess excellent listening skills.
When you think long-term, you’re prepared to invest resources in talent. You view people as an investment that can pay future dividends.
You’re not looking at prospective employees. You’re looking for potential leaders to help you run the business in the next five to ten years.
3. Shift Your Focus Toward Soft Skills
Experience and education are important. However, hiring based on whoever has the most impressive experience and glowing academic credentials won’t guarantee results.
As the popular saying in sports goes, “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”
Recruiters prioritize job applicants with a long list of accomplishments in career and education because they’re a “safe bet.” Building a team based on credentials doesn’t always guarantee home run hiring.
What if the Stanford graduate with a Northwestern MBA and a 10-year stint at Microsoft turned out to be a headcase?
Instead of accepting accomplishments at face value, find out how “it” happened. Where did “it” come from? “It” refers to the motivation or the inspiration for earning the accomplishment.
Where was the drive to succeed rooted in?
When uncovering the soft skills or the behavioral traits that define a candidate, uncovering the “Why” is better than asking “What.”
Again, behavioral-based HR tools such as DISC and TestGorilla can help. However, you can tweak the interview questions to emphasize the candidate’s values.
For example, you find out a candidate generated the highest sales in his company after being transferred to a far-off, remote location with a small population. Ask him how he hit his sales target under less-than-ideal conditions.
- Was he motivated by his doubters?
- Was being away from his family inspiring him to work harder to make the sacrifice worth it?
- Did he want to prove to himself and others that anything is possible as long you have faith and self-belief?
When the job candidate gets the ball rolling, keep it going! Create a feedback mechanism. Engage him in a back-and-forth conversation. Respond or react accordingly to information that’s related to you.
Interviews are never an exact science. However, as the candidate loosens up, he’ll slowly drop his defenses and willingly reveal the personality traits that define him.
4. Look From Within
The gym you opened three years ago has become profitable, and the business financials support your decision to open a second location. The new location will need a gym manager.
You’ll likely post a job ad to find your new gym manager.
Why not consider the gym manager who helped you run the first location? He’s not the only reason for the gym’s success.
However, you know how he works and what he brings to the table. You’ve seen him at his best and his worst. Together, you’ve overcome the business’s biggest problems and celebrated its successes.
Yet, like other business owners, you’ll prefer looking for external candidates instead of from within.
A study showed that external hires are paid 18% more than internal hires because they have more experience. The irony is that external hires perform poorly in the first two years of employment and have a higher exit rate than internal hires.
Contrary to popular belief, salary isn’t what employees value the most.
A study published by Deloitte showed the things employees value the most in a job are:
- The nature of the job.
- Prospects for career growth and promotion.
- An environment for learning.
- Building relationships with co-workers.
Paying attention to these qualities can help you build a workplace culture that attracts and retains top talent in the industry.
Transferring your current gym manager to the new location opens a promotion for someone on the team. The other employees will see that career growth and movement are possible with your company.
They’ll be motivated to work harder and perform better to experience the same success as their co-workers.
5. Support Your Decisions with Data
Experienced managers often say they make decisions based on “gut feel.” They can’t explain it but trust their intuition to make the right decision.
They couldn’t explain it because they probably didn’t set measurable targets and analyze performance metrics. Instead, they leaned into their personal biases to validate a decision.
Gut feel or intuition isn’t experience. When you don’t have empirical evidence or data to support your decision, you’re doing guesswork.
Let’s go back to our example in “Relax the Standards.”
Let’s assume you hired someone you had a pleasant experience doing business with in the past. If you believe he’ll deliver results based on past experience, you might be unprepared if the outcome isn’t what you expected.
You must set measurable targets and review his performance metrics monthly and quarterly. People make mistakes, and his competencies might not align with your business’s needs.
By studying the data, you’ll have the basis for determining an employee’s strengths and weaknesses. You know where he needs to improve. Keeping track of his metrics will let you know if he’s improving or not.
You’re on the right track if data shows his performance has improved. If not, consider reassigning him to another position that fits his skill set.
Relying on personal feelings or biases creates blind spots. Analyzing data is an objective approach to making personnel decisions.
6. Think of the Team
Hiring a superstar won’t guarantee success. A business requires a multitude of skills to handle different roles and responsibilities. It takes a team to attain goals and achieve success.
Can you imagine a basketball team where everyone wants to shoot the ball? Who will do the other things like pass, defend, and rebound?
You can put up a team of proven 30-point scorers, but you’ll lose every time if no one does the other things required to win a game.
Focus less on the individual and prioritize how the individuals can work together as a team. Think of synergy, the strength of collaboration, and how their talents complement rather than contradict each other.
For example, you want to create a content writing team for your digital marketing agency. If your team is comprised only of content writers, you mustn’t expect off-the-chart results.
A content writing team needs other skills, such as an SEO specialist, a graphics artist, and an editor.
The SEO specialist creates the optimization strategy. He will prepare the content writing guidelines and list of target keywords, define search intent and the CTA, identify the competition, and establish the workflow.
The graphics artist provides the visuals: images, infographics, and animation. The editor proofreads submissions, corrects spelling and grammatical errors, and improves readability.
You don’t have to hire the best or most accomplished in each field. Look for talent who has expressed a willingness to work with others. Prioritize candidates who hold their egos in check and prioritize the team’s interests over their own.
Conclusion
People are assets. If you want your assets to grow in value, you have to invest in them.
Finding the right talent for your team is the first step. The next step is nurturing their skills and helping them become their best.
Put them through seminars, schedule skills workshops, and hire resource speakers. Have some of your people attend or participate in trade shows and industry conventions. Select talent to handle regional offices for six months to one year.
These are events that create opportunities for personal and professional growth. Investing in your people shows you value them. In return, they’ll give their best to help your business grow.
It’s an ecosystem that cultivates an environment that attracts talented, right-fit people.
Hiring the right talent is why Clutch has awarded Mountaintop Web Design as one of the top web developers and B2B companies in Colorado for three straight years.
UpCity has also awarded us citations for being the best in web design, SEO, and business consultancy.
We wouldn’t have succeeded if we didn’t find the right talent for our company.
Give us a call or email, and let’s discuss how we can help grow your business.
