By Melanee Cottrill, Civitas & Charles Longanecker, Business Development Systems
The most important job of any business owner is the selection of employees.
Your business will never be better than the people it employs.
All businesses are simply people at work.
“Our people make the difference.”
“We have the best people.”
“Our employees make the company strong.”
You’ve heard maxims like these from nearly every company in the world. Perhaps you’ve even said it yourself, proudly proclaiming that your employees are the best. And maybe they are.
But it begs the question – if everyone’s employees are the best, where are all the average – and below average – people?
The truth of the matter is, most companies aren’t composed entirely of above-average people. The opposite is much more likely to be true. Yet, we all want that above-average team, the team that excels at their jobs, that gets it done fast and correct, and that makes the client happy.
With a little effort, you too can have that above-average team. Over the next few months, we’ll tell you how to get there. From finding the right candidates, to interview techniques and exploring qualifications beyond the interview – we’ll cover everything you need to know.vAnd if you have any questions or need help along the way, feel free to ask us.
If having that above-average team isn’t motivation enough for you, here’s some interesting numbers to consider. Just over half of all job applications (53% to be precise) contain some inaccurate information[1]. Whether it be about the person’s experience, qualifications, or education, the odds are something on that application is at best clever interpretation of the truth and at worst an outright lie. Which, it just so happens one-third of applications contain[2].
In order to hire the best and brightest, you need a proven system that gives consistent results time after time. A system that is scalable, that you can teach to others, and that gives you empirical results that allow you to make objective decisions. The fact that you like, or have a good feeling about a candidate is not enough data to make good hiring decision. You need to be able to predict the behavior you need in context to the job, and then assess if your new candidate has the right stuff.
When we start assigning dollar amounts to our “good feeling” hires gone wrong, the cost becomes more than an inconvenient truth. You may have heard that the Department of Labor estimates a bad hire costs, on average, 30% of the hire’s salary in the initial year. For an Executive Director with an $80,000 salary, that’s a $24,000 hiring mistake. For an entry level administrator making $20,000 a year, it is still a $6,000 mistake.
I know my boss wouldn’t be too happy if I made a $6,000 mistake. Would yours?
Coming Up: Finding the Right Candidates
