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Putting A Team Together: Making Sure You Get The Best Candidates Every Time

There are many factors that contribute to the success or failure of a small business. A big part of it is you. Yes, you! Your leadership as the company’s CEO will play a huge part in marshalling the skills and personal qualities of your team. This is your business and your team will look to you to embody the values and ideals upon which it is based. Then, of course, there’s your brand. Your brand should mean a great deal for both your employees and your customers. For your employees your brand is a symbol they can rally behind. It’s a set of standards, values and expectations that they know they need to adhere and champion.

For your customers they know it represents a standard of product, service and experience that they can consistently rely upon. There’s the ability to walk that fine line between investing enough in your business that you’re able to facilitate sustainable growth while still cutting down overhead costs enough for you to maintain a healthy cash flow. Everything from your logo to your customer complaints procedure plays a huge part in determining your success in an increasingly fast paced and competitive landscape.

But all of this amounts to little if you don’t have a great team behind you. From the Avengers to the A-Team, from the Ghostbusters to the Justice League, pop culture has shown us time and again that no matter how formidable we may be individually, with the right team behind us we can be unstoppable. Here, we’re going to talk about ensuring that your business is able to attract, recruit and retain top tier candidates to build a team that makes your business a force to be reckoned with. A team that’s able to meet not just today’s challenges, but tomorrow’s with gusto, knowledge, skills and personality.

Know what and who you want

Before the recruitment process even starts, you need to have a clear idea of the exact kind of candidate you want. Sounds like a no-brainer right? But sometimes this can be nebulous and hard to quantify. While you might have a hunch about the kind of candidate you want, the rest of your panel may not be on the same page, and be on the lookout for different traits and experiences to yourself. This is why, if your business doesn’t have its own HR department, and in-house recruitment process you should work with an outsourced HR provider. Not only should you be doing this to ensure that your business is on the right side of HR compliance anyway, it will be invaluable in helping you to crystallize your “wish list” for the ideal candidate into a detailed and specific job description and person specification to ensure that the advertised vacancy attracts the right candidates.

As important as it is to know exactly what your business needs and extrapolate that into what you’re looking for in the perfect candidate, it’s also important to be flexible. A candidate may meet 95% of your criteria, but you can fill in the other 5% with the right training and development program. Recruitment is a time consuming and expensive process and after a while you still may not have a candidate who ticks all of your boxes. Will you prolong this potentially disruptive process for even longer, or will you make concessions? The decision lies with you.

Make your business desirable

If you expect to consistently attract top tier candidates, you need to make sure that you present your business as a top tier workplace. Even in an uncertain economy, a good candidate will still turn down a job if they feel that you’re unable to give them the guidance and development they need to meet their career goals, or simply that they don’t feel they’d enjoy working with you. Hence, it’s vital that you think long and hard about how you present your…

Salaries and benefits- Remember what we said about managing the fine line between saving and adequate investment? Recruiting top level talent doesn’t come cheap. If you expect to attract the very best candidates it goes without saying that you need to offer a competitive salary with performance related incentives to ensure that they’re well compensated for going the extra mile. This must also be supplemented with a system of benefits that will help the right candidates to be happy, healthy and productive employees now and for years to come. Let’s face it, the last thing you want is to spend a fortune on someone who drops you after a year. Allow them the flexibility to manage their home and family lives by granting them maternity and paternity leave in accordance with government guidelines.

Accommodating their childcare needs, dietary requirements, religious obligations and generally making sure that they’re taken care of is also a must. On-site childcare is extremely attractive for candidates who have young children. Likewise, there’s a lot of goodwill value in honouring employees’ dietary requirements. Having an external caterer supply gluten free, halal, kosher, vegetarian and vegan meals will show how much you value your employees beliefs, values and requirements. Sure, money is important, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle.

Training, development and career guidance- Candidates want to be well compensated for their efforts but they also need to see that their employers demonstrate a personal investment in their professional development and growth, both in the position they’re applying for and beyond. If they don’t have this, they’ll walk straight into the open arms of your competitors. If you offer regular appraisals, established training programs, opportunities for progression and multi disciplinary collaboration this is likely to make you very attractive to career oriented and self-motivated candidates.

Ethics and workplace culture- The digital age has ushered in a new era of corporate transparency and social responsibility. Businesses are more accountable than ever not just to their customers, but to their employees. As such, they need to have an ethical focus rather than merely being a profit driven operation. Initiatives that help your business to run in a way that reduces business waste, helps the environment by lowering the business’ carbon footprint, or helps to celebrate the cultural diversity of the workforce are also very attractive.

Employee empowerment- Great candidates won’t be satisfied if they’re made into worker drones. They need to feel like empowered autonomous individuals whose contributions to the team and the business are valued and respected. Creating an environment that’s open to new ideas from everyone and values each individual employee’s contribution and suggestions is the key to employee empowerment.

It’s all about the interview

Now that you’ve established your workplace as a great catch for the right candidate, and developed your job description and person specification, the candidates are rolling in and it’s time to start interviewing. The interview process is your opportunity to sort the wheat from the chaff and the professionals from the posers. You’d be amazed by the discrepancy that’s often seen between a candidate’s application and a candidate’s performance at interview. Likewise, there are many candidates who are particularly skilled in interview situation whose woking performance doesn’t live up to your expectations after they’re hired. It’s essential that you ask the right questions, but it’s also important to spot the tells that will identify a faker.

• • Does the candidate actually answer the questions you ask? Some candidates possess excellent presentation skills… And not a whole lot else. They may have come across as a little too good to be true in their application. They’ll have rote-learned some impressive sounding statistics and observations and will rattle them off whether they pertain to the question asked or not.
  • Is the candidate engaging? Are they engaging with you or are they just coasting on superficial charm and a smattering of surface level knowledge that could be gleaned from an evening with Wikipedia.

 

• Are their answers well constructed? Fakers will have answers that sound memorized and regurgitated, yet methodical thinkers have a well ordered and logical flow to their responses.

 

Now you’ve got the right candidate, how are you going to keep them?

While it’s essential to recruit the right candidates, it’s vital that you take steps to retain them. Of course, it’s inevitable that you will lose employees throughout the course of your operations. You shouldn’t take it as a slight on your business but you should use The 20 Best Exit Interview Questions To Improve Your Business to ensure that your business benefits in some way from the loss. Employee retention is an aspect of business that many employers grapple with and while some may need to leave for personal and practical reasons, you can still take steps to ensure that they stay.  

Your workplace culture is your greatest employee retention tool. Achievements should be celebrated and respected, and while employees should be challenged and stimulated, they should not be presented with unrealistic or impossible targets. You should always have an open door policy and show that you’re constantly open to their suggestions, feedback and criticisms. When you have the right workplace culture you’ll find that top tier candidates become happy, productive and loyal employees.