As soon as a company becomes more than just an idea, it must start treating employees as its most important resource. This is especially important for a small startup that doesn’t have that much to offer to its employees.
In these cases, a company must try to hire the most talented people they can find and offer them a corporate culture and environment in which they can thrive both personally and professionally.
Set clear goals
It’s common for a small company to try to hire employees that can wear multiple hats and pitch in with work that’s beyond their primary expertise or interest. There are advantages to this approach (it’s much less expensive for one), but it’s something to be avoided as soon as you’re able to do so.
Try to set clear goals and tasks that will be required from employees. That way you know you’re going to find those who are experts in the area and you can create a work atmosphere in which no one feels overworked or underused.
Use social media
At this point, social media pretty much informs every facet of running a business and hiring isn no different. You should be on the lookout for new employees at all times, even when you don’t have a spot to feel at the moment. This is where professional social media such as LinkedIn can help a lot.
More personal and casual social media sites can also prove to be rather useful in this regard. Keep in mind that your social media pages are the most visible representation of the company and try to use them as brand ambassadors of sorts when talking to potential employees.
Don’t forget about soft skills
Employees are hired to do a particular job and their skills regarding this job are the most important factor in them landing a job. However, the day-to-day work environment is much more complex than that. Soft skills like sticking to a schedule, communication, understanding and processing tasks can be equally and sometimes even more important than the primary job.
It’s much more difficult to test these skills because they take a while to come into play. Interviews can help with these, but there’s nothing like working with someone for a few months to get to know them.
Checking references
Recommendations and references are often a key factor in hiring. You want to know that an employee has experience in the field and can jump into the position without too much delay or training needed. In order to make sure this is the case, it isn’t enough to browse through their CV – make sure to call everyone from the reference list and actually get into nuts and bolts of the candidate’s work history.
For employees whose duties involve working with money, it’s also useful to obtain a police clearance certificate that will guarantee that they haven’t run into any problems with the law before.
Create opportunities for advancement
It often happens that a job becomes predictable and unfulfilling once you’ve worked on it for a while. Employees want to have an opportunity to grow with the job and to advance in it. This is something small companies can’t always offer because there’s no way to know if the company will exist in the years to come.
One of the ways of mitigating this problem is to create a clear career path from day one. That means everyone knows how and when promotions happen and there’s much less tension within the office, while the most talented employees are still drawn to your company.
Hiring students
Hiring students before their career even start is a great way to hire talented and educated young people and to make sure the employees are loyal and have a sense of community regarding your company.
University studies are becoming more and more expensive every year and helping young employees with their tuitions can turn out to be a beneficial relationship for everyone involved. Some companies hesitate to pay for their employee’s education because sometimes they leave the job once their contractual obligations are over. This is a legitimate concern, but the risk is worth taking.
On-the-job training
Sometimes it isn’t possible to find employees with enough relevant experience. This can be a problem, but it isn’t unsolvable. In order to mitigate these problems, companies should try to organize on-the-job training that will prepare the employees for transitioning to another job or another set of tasks.
The training should be paid and it shouldn’t take away from the obligations they already have. It’s also useful to have mentorship programs where more experienced employees could help train the younger ones.
Finding the best employees is the most important job of any manager. Before you’re able to do that, you need to understand what the job will actually be and what kind of person are you looking for.
The post Avengers Assemble: How to Find the Best Employees for Your Startup appeared first on Digital Media News & Training.
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