It’s often said that you’re only as strong as your weakest link. This couldn’t be any truer in the business world because the higher the quality of your employees, the higher the quality of your work product.
The problem with this is that many business owners and hiring managers feel that it’s extremely difficult to find high achieving employees, people who are capable of taking their companies to the next level. They feel like no qualified, hard-working applicants even exist, which makes it tempting to give up the fight and just accept someone who is going to be “good enough.”
However, taking this type of approach can really damage a business, possibly even to the point of forcing you to close your doors. Fortunately, you don’t have to put your company at risk of this tragic end as there are four things you can do today to hire more employees who are likely to become your top achievers.
1. Post a Stellar Job Description
If you’ve ever been a part of the hiring process, then you already know that many people apply for jobs that aren’t a good fit based on their background, education, and experience. One way to help keep this from happening, or to at least reduce its rate of occurrence, is to post the best job description you can. Elements of a top notch job post include: listing the opening with a job title that will attract the right applicant, sharing a summary of what types of tasks the person will be responsible for doing, and only listing necessary requirements so high achieving applicants don’t “weed themselves out” based on criteria that you’d like them to have, but is not an absolute.
2. Let Technology Give You a Hand
Though most of the employee selection process requires human input, daily technological advances can help you find the best employees for the job. For instance, there is employee recruitment software that actually matches prospective applicants with the attributes needed for that particular position and ranks them based on suitability. Talk about hiring made easy!
3. Develop Your EVP
Gallup polls have found that businesses that focus on “ employee value proposition ,” or EVP, can increase their productivity by 10 percent, sales by 20 percent, and profitability by 30 percent. What is EVP? It’s basically creating a system whereby you reward employees work product with certain benefits. A few ways to develop your EVP are to learn more about your current top performers, focus on hiring people with similar traits, offer competitive benefits so the best applicants come to you and not your competitors, and telling prospective employees about your company culture in order to ensure that the person you hire is going to be a good fit.
4. Ask Around
Referrals are one of the best ways to get employees, especially if they’re coming from someone you trust to be a good judge of character. That’s why it helps to ask someone you know if they know anybody who would be perfect for the job. This helps prevent situations where you hire someone only to have a colleague say, “Oh man, I know a person who would have been just right for that position!”
Selecting high achieving employees can be difficult, but it’s not impossible if you focus on these four things. If you post a stellar job description, let technology give you a hand, develop your EVP, and ask around, you’ll be well on your way to creating a staff of the hardest working, highest quality people possible.
