How to Choose Great Employees and Why It’s Important
Many business owners find it difficult to find knowledgeable, reliable employees. However, finding the right people to hire for your business is extremely important. Learn how to simplify your hiring process to make finding good employees simple. Explore what makes an employee a great fit for your company and why employee retention is super important.
How to Simplify Your Hiring Process
The first step to simplifying your company’s hiring process is finding great human resources (HR) software. Using HR software during the hiring process ensures that the applicants selected are a good match for your open positions. It reduces the number of errors made during the hiring process and automates some of the more common HR processes. The key to finding the right software for your company is thoroughly reviewing different options to make sure the software you choose has everything you need. The good news is, you can use software that helps you discover and compare lists of what and who competes with popular HR software such as Peoplesoft. It helps you to make a quick, informed decision.
In addition to finding good HR software, you should:
- Create detailed job descriptions for every position in your company that clearly define tasks, expectations, responsibilities, desired experience and required skills to help eliminate unqualified candidates immediately.
- Review cover letters and resumes thoroughly, narrowing your options down to a shortlist of top candidates.
- Evaluate your top candidates further by exploring their social media profiles. This helps you determine whether their personality and values align with your company’s environment.
Why is Employee Retention Important?
Streamlining your hiring process helps you find candidates who are a great fit for the position and your company, which in turn increases employee retention. This is important for three reasons:
- When employees remain loyal to your company, you don’t need to go through the hiring process as often, reducing the workload for your HR department.
- Hiring and firing employees disrupts the work environment for your other employees.
- It’s time-consuming and costly to find and train new staff.
The good news is, employee retention isn’t all about money. In fact, a Nisbets survey concluded that the overall workplace environment, relationships with other employees and work/life balance were all more important to employee retention than the amount of money an employee makes. Because of this, investing in high-quality HR software that helps you hire the right people is extremely important.
What Makes a Good Employee?
Obviously, good employees are dependable and have the knowledge and skills needed to do their job, but what other traits do good employees possess? To ensure you maintain a happy, positive workplace environment, limit disagreements and misunderstandings between employees. Also, to keep everything running smoothly, look for these traits in your candidates:
- Honesty
- Excellent communication skills
- The ability to adapt to new environments easily and learn new things quickly
- Willingness to help others
- Ethics and morals that align with your company
- Discipline and punctuality
- Willingness to work hard
You should also avoid hiring people who seem like they enjoy gossiping, who aren’t self-motivated and don’t work well with others. Your new employees need to fit in well with your current team. Remember, people don’t typically get along well with teammates they deem gossipy, or people who often goof off — no one wants to constantly pick up someone else’s slack.
Hiring new employees doesn’t have to be difficult. It might take some time to find someone who is a good overall fit for your business. But if you have good HR software, know what to look for in employees and have the right processes in place, hiring people to fill vacant positions is a whole lot easier.