When you have limited resources, recruiting the right employees for your brand can be challenging. You don’t want to hire just anyone, but onboarding experienced professionals can be a burden on a modest budget.
That’s why many businesses choose to hire fewer employees who are exceptionally qualified for their position and can tackle a variety of tasks. Below, 10 members of Forbes New York Business Council shared their best recruiting tips to ensure you’re bringing on the right players. Follow their recommendations to build a “dream team” for your business.
1. Diversify Your Team
If you had a portfolio of stock, you would diversify to split risk and optimize results as different markets ebb and flow, right? Take a detailed look at the current demographics in your team. Assess the players for both hard and soft skills and identify your gaps. If you have four 25-year-olds from Harvard, you may want to look at a candidate that brings the cognitive difference. - Felicity Hassan, Audeliss Inc.
2. Set Measurable Hiring Goals
Setting measurable weekly, monthly and quarterly goals is the first step to meeting goals consistently. Write down your goals and share them with the team in order to foster accountability and shared motivation, providing you with an added push in the right direction. - Jill Strickman, GENUINE: The Real People Company
3. Assess Their Practical Experience
Way too many companies have candidates do tests in interviews that won't exactly be part of their day-to-day work. Everyone wants to hire someone who is both experienced and qualified. However, focusing on the practical skills needed for the job is key to hiring and retaining A-players. You end up saving resources in training post-hire since people with practical experience start executing sooner. - David Cohen, Utility
4. Ask Your Existing Team To Help Evaluate Candidates
It's easy to be overprepared for an interview and nail it. It's harder to adapt to company culture and work with other team members. Let other employees know about bringing someone on board in a non-threatening way and let them be part of a "mock" scenario to validate whether or not that new recruit will most likely succeed or fail as a new hire. Nothing beats a collaborative work environment. - Ali Tarafdar, Global Consulting Inc
5. Look For A Learning Mindset
To increase the odds of identifying talent that will be true human capital, look for learning agility, initiative and drive and create a performance profile that focuses on expected outcomes versus a traditional job description. Keeping employees engaged and productive is a bigger battle. Create a culture where employees feel inspired, challenged and empowered. - Karthik Krishnan, Britannica Group (Britannica, Merriam Webster, Britannica Knowledge System and Melingo)
6. Know Your Culture And Priorities
There are two important sides to focus on: your own company and the new hire. Looking inward, understand your company's work culture so that the new joiner and your existing team feel comfortable expanding the team. And for the new hire, understand what your priorities actually are and which ones are "nice to have." No one will be perfect, so knowing what is essential for success is key. - Maurice Harary, The Bid Lab
7. Test Them Out With Part-Time Work First
Hiring a full-time employee is costly due to overhead (taxes, insurance, benefits). Worst of all, it may make you, the business owner, work less as you think you have somebody to offload to. When the budget is tight, it may be smart to bring on part-timers first so you can try them out and assess. If they are good and produce good ROI, then you know you are ready to switch them over to full time. - Ching Au, Durabrite, Inc
8. Ask 'Scenario' Questions To Gauge Their Instincts
I’m a huge believer in giving your interviewees unique scenarios and asking them how they’d handle those situations. It’s a very telling way to see if someone would instinctually ask for help or if they would troubleshoot on their own—you want someone who can pivot and make things happen, and this is a great way to see their natural reactions before deciding to bring them on. - Hoda Mahmoodzadegan, Molly’s Milk Truck + F'in Delicious Beverages + BAḴT Global
9. Make Their First 90 Days Probationary
You will never be able to hire another you and it's not fair to expect your hirees to love your company as much as you do. When bringing on new team members, let them know that the first 90 to 120 days is a probationary period and schedule incremental evaluations. You will feel more empowered stating this upfront and you will know during the time whether the new hire is a good fit or not. - Krista Barnett, Boot Band
10. Look For Passion Above All Else
You can teach tools and process (substitute for experience), but you can't teach passion. When someone is willing to fail and bring passion in what they do—they are my spark. I want to grow with them. - Das Nobel, MTX Group Inc
