Hiring The Right Team
The Situation
Hiring the right people for your team is one of the most important tasks towards building an enduring culture to drive robust growth and retain customers. However, as CEOs and business owners, we are often pulled in many directions “putting out fires” or scaling to new markets. As a result, we rightly delegate the task of hiring to human resources (HR), but without actively managing the process. Unfortunately, if an employee churns, your business would absorb serveral costs — the cost of hiring, onboarding, and training a new employee. For instance, the Society for Human Resource Management estimates that it costs $20,000 to $30,000 in recruiting and training expenses to replace an employee making $40,000 a year. Since hiring affects the company’s bottom and top line, as a CEO, you should be helping to drive your team’s hiring practices.
The Best Approach
As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, which is marked by extreme labor shortages, we should assess our current hiring practices to ensure that they are yielding a positive return on investment reflected in high employee retention and operational efficiency (revenue per FTE).
Adam Bryant, from The New York Times, recently interviewed over 500 CEOs for his “Corner Office” series and walked away with key best practices to improve companies’ hiring processes. According to top CEOs, the following three approaches have helped their teams select the right candidates.
3 Suggestions for Hiring the Right Employee
1. Be creative.
Example: Interview Candidates at Lunch or While Touring Company Facility
Goal: Gain insights into things such as: (i) Is the person genuinely interested in the work of the organization? (ii) Do they treat people as equals, regardless of their title?
2. Be challenging.
Example: Throw Curveball Questions
Goal: Get candidates to open up and provide insights into what makes them tick.
3. Allow your employees to help.
Example: Select Employees on the Same Level as Candidate to Conduct Interviews
Goal: Get timely feedback from team members who will be working directly with candidates, prior to making hiring decisions.
