Selecting and Hiring Is Your Job

A good employee is hard to find even with the help of the now popular social media. The difficulty is generally proportional to the position to be filled; i.e., the higher the position the more difficult the search and the vetting of candidates. Small businesses are not exempt from this and thus managers must be well prepared for the entire process of hiring; interviewing candidates is a key part of the process.

Small and midsize businesses suffer from conflicting syndromes when it comes to hiring employees. One is defined as “too quick to hire, too slow to fire”, and the other is the reluctance to “get into the mess of looking for, hiring and training new employees”.

The first one results from the thinking that when a business is in need of additional help, managers don’t have the patience or time to look for the ideal candidate and are willing to settle for whoever is least objectionable. However, when someone is not performing to expectations, managers are reluctant to release the person because of the “who is going to do the work?” excuse.

The second syndrome happens because managers are not skilled or confident in the processes of selecting and hiring employees or don’t want to invest the time and energy that is required. In some cases it is because they don’t want the expense related to the selection, hiring and training, not realizing that it can be much more costly not hiring needed help or—worst yet—keeping wrong employees on the payroll.

It is understandable that these processes may not be enjoyable and, in fact, most hiring managers hate them; however, the entire process doesn’t have to be painful and it can even be enjoyable once the hiring manager becomes proficient at it. The truth is that with hiring, like with most things in life, you only get out as much as you put in, so if you are not willing to invest the time, effort and interest in doing the best job you can to select the best person(s) for the job, you will not be fair to your organization or to yourself and thus you will not enjoy the process.

Haste makes waste and rushing the process so you can get back to “your job” would cause much waste to your organization, in the form of non-qualified employees. As a manager you must understand that selecting and hiring employees is part of your job and thus you must perform it as best as you can. Hiring wrong typically results in poor performance, training and retraining, poor customer relations, lost profits, and even the threat of lawsuits from bias in hiring.

According to Dr. Ira Wolf of Success Performance Solutions 42% of employee turnover could be eliminated with effective interviewing and hiring process. This statistics is sufficient to motivate managers to take the process seriously and become experts at it.