It’s easy to hire and hard to fire so you better hire the best or be ready to do the hard part of this hiring-firing process. In my career as a solopreneur, I have done a lot of mistakes I hired many bad-fit people and didn’t fire them early because I was emotionally attached to them. But with the passage of time, i learned the art of “Hire Slow, Fire Fast” and to hire the best we must hire slow.
In this post I’ll cover what I look now when I am hiring a new employee.
1. Previous Employement
If you want to hire the best candidate look at what was their responsibilities at their previous job? What were the results? Why are they leaving? for how long they stuck to their previous job? what is their average employment duration? if it’s below one year then don’t hire them they most probably are switching jobs just to get a payment increase.
if you are hiring people who keep leaving jobs then you are going to keep finding new employees every other month and this too costly. But if you hire people who stick around, someone who worked at their previous company for years, they’re much more likely to stick around with your business and you’re not going to have to keep replacing.
2. Ask for Refrences
Ask the protentional employee about references of their old employers and do the reference check. Call their old employers (of course not the current boss) and ask them about the strengths and weaknesses of the candidate, ask them (the old employer) what they see them ( the candidate ) as their ideal role within an organization?. Don’t ask them “what do you think about this person? Should I hire them?” if you ask this most of the time they would lie.
3. Learning Attitude
Hire someone only if they are interested in learning new things. If they are not willing to learn new things say them an early goodbye no matter how good they are at what they do. Today’s world is rapidly changing and the skillset that we have today is not enough for tomorrow, the framework that we know today is not relevant tomorrow. Your business will grow and you will need to promote someone from the existing team or you might start a new project which requires a new skill and someone from your team is not willing to learn that skill then you will need to hire a new employee. If your team is not learning new things and you are not focused on the personal growth of your team your business will not grow or will grow very slowly.
4. Skills and Experience
While skills and experience is the first things that comes into mind when we need to shortlist candidates but for me this is the lowest priority factor. If someone have the skillset and the experience to do a job but they failed to pass the above three points I’ll never hire them but if someone have the entry level or mid level skillset and experience to do the job and they pass the above three points I would love to hire them because they can be taught, they can stick around and can grow with the company.
Conclusion
Hire Slow, Fire Fast
To hire the best candidate hire someone who is sold to the vision, not to the money only, who can stick around for years and can grow with the company, who is hungry to learn more, someone who has positive relations at their past companies and someone who is a cultural fit for your company.
Be open and transparent to your employees, give them the right benefits and pay increases. Tell them what exactly you want from them. If you are not hiring candidates that are sold to vision, not to the money then keep looking for replacements.
Interesting observations and really useful.
I am glad that you found this useful 🙂