Hiring Tips
Break Bad Hiring Habits
Finding the right employee for your team can be like searching for a hard-to-find puzzle piece. With thousands to choose from, the task can be overwhelming. Choose wrong, and your new team member won’t be the right fit for your job opening, your team, or your company. A problem far more frustrating than a missing puzzle piece, hiring an employee who doesn’t complement your team can result in lost time and productivity, turnover, and endless hours of headaches for you and your staff. Choose correctly, and a new hire could be the perfect way to take your team – and maybe your business – to new heights.
With all this pressure when you’re adding to your team, it’s easy to loose sight of the big picture. Employers often fall into the bad habit of always hiring employees with similar strengths and backgrounds instead of balancing their team with a variety of different skill sets and experience levels.
Sometimes, you have to look outside the box for the ideal addition who will strengthen, balance, and build your team. If your office is filled with employees cut from the same pattern, you may need to break the mold and hire the employee who changes things up.
Team Needs
The first step to finding the right employee is to examine the needs of your current team. Don’t just look at the qualifications and job descriptions you have on paper to determine your requirements. With the size of the current job pool and low employee engagement levels, it’s a great time to hire employees whose skills and strengths go beyond your basic qualifications and find the employees who will bolster achievement and strengthen your company.
Consider your team’s strengths and weaknesses in areas like experience and personality. For example, if your team is made up of creative thinkers who get lost in their extravagant ideas, consider hiring a more decisive, analytical thinker who can add balance, give input, and help keep everyone on track. Once you’ve established your ideal applicant, evaluate and interview potential candidates who meet the team’s needs with their experience, personality, and strengths.
Experience
If you have a habit of hiring inexperienced employees whose development you can shape, don’t dismiss an applicant seasoned with experience. Adding experience to the team can generate efficiency and productivity, provide the necessary insight others lack, and help streamline processes. And, you won’t have to spend as much time training an experienced worker who knows the ropes.
If your team is made up of experienced employees, consider hiring an inexperienced candidate who can bring fresh ideas to the table. Workers who need experience can add passion and flexibility to the team. Eager to prove themselves, individuals new to the workforce will work hard to achieve goals and reach new heights. Whether you hire an individual who is looking for or offering knowledge, having different levels of experience on your team will diversify and fortify your company.
Personality
Personality can play a big role in the dynamics of a team. The wrong personality can affect the way a team operates. Be careful to choose employees who work well with others, especially when staff members work in close quarters, like a cubicle. Hire employees who will harmonize with your team. If your employees can be somewhat high strung, consider hiring someone who’ll help mellow the team’s dynamic to eliminate or minimize office drama and increase productivity. Not sure what your team wants? Consider opening a portion of your interview up to team members so they can test the dynamics of potential co-workers.
Also, keep in mind how each person’s personality relates to their specific job description. If they have as much personality as a fish, for example, they may not make the best salesperson. Someone who doesn’t appear approachable won’t make the friendliest receptionist.
Strengths
The success and achievement of your team’s depends upon each person’s strengths and abilities. So, hire employees who add to your team’s current strengths. If your team’s strengths are heavy in ideas and input, consider adding someone who excels at arranging and activating to help develop and organize those ideas. Hiring to add new strengths will benefit each member’s unique abilities and skills. Combining the right employees together will create an unstoppable team.
It may take a little time to find the missing puzzle piece for your dream team, but taking the time to hire the right fit will help your team achieve its highest potential.
Leadership Must Reads
Ten Business Best-Sellers of the Decade
No matter how long you’ve been a company leader, whether it’s more than 50 years or less than five, you’ll never know everything. There’s still so much to learn and so many ways you can grow and develop as the head of your company, department, or team. You learn from experience, training, and education. You learn from your triumphs. You learn from your defeats. And, just like you’ve done since childhood, you learn from books.
Books broaden our horizons and open up new worlds. They teach us about humanity and about adventure. They show us how to take risks and how to find success. From books, we learn through others’ experiences, successes, and mistakes. But unlike the childhood favorite Pat the Bunny or the classic Goodnight Moon, leadership books aren’t always a quick read. It takes time to read a book, a valuable commodity that, as a leader, you probably don’t have a lot of. And, with thousands of business books published each year, it’s hard to even know where to start.
So, you can improve your mind and expand your knowledge for the growth of your team, business and for yourself, by reading some of the past decade’s business must reads.
1) Strengths-Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, authors of the long-running international best seller Strengths Finder 2.0. The 2009 best seller, Strength-Based Leadership identifies three keys to being a more effective leader: knowing your strengths, investing in the strengths of others, and building a team with the right strengths.
2) The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferris, was recognized as a bestseller in 2008 by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek. The 4-Hour Workweek advises readers to define their dreams and cut loose from work for a new way of life and living.
3) Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath (2007). A BusinessWeek bestseller for several years now, Made to Stick examines what makes an idea “stick” and gives insight on how to have stickier ideas.
4) Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness by Jeffrey Gitomer. The short and sweet of selling, this little red book shows readers practical and quick ways to achieve greatness in sales.
5) Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking by author Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell, who also wrote the bestselling books The Tipping Point and Outliers, discuses the mind’s incredible ability to make decisive judgments in split seconds.
6) 2004 business book, The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary by author Mark Sanborn. Inspired by his postman, Fred, Sanborn created this inspiring tale about the principles for excelling no matter what your job is.
7) 2003 New York Times and Wall Street Journal’s best seller The Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by author Seth Godin. The Purple Cow tosses out the old rules of marketing and looks at what stand-out companies like Starbucks and KrispyKreme do differently.
8) The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by best selling author Patrick Lencioni. Lencioni identifies and explores the five fundamental causes of team failure through the fable of a CEO.
9) The long-running best-seller Good to Great by Jim Collins examines the performance of 11 standout companies that became great and shows readers how they can transform their businesses.
10) Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results by authors Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul and John Christian. This inside look into Seattle’s Pike Place Market explores how changing your attitude can help you enjoy your life and career.
Whether you’re interested in enhancing employee engagement or standing out from other companies, these bestsellers are a great place to start expanding your mind and your imagination to all the places you’ll go as a professional – and as a company. So, take a look and start reading one of these must-read books today.
Are You Breaking the Law?
The Government Crackdown on Misclassified Employees
As businesses slowly begin to regain ground from the setbacks of a struggling economy, many employers are cautiously utilizing independent contractors to cut employment costs and meet consumer demands. Independent contractors, or 1099 workers, are self-employed workers who control how their services are performed and acquire their own clients. Businesses who recruit contractors can save money because they’re not responsible for withholding income taxes or paying health insurance cost, overtime, Social Security, Medicare, or unemployment taxes for contract workers. Utilizing 1099 workers can be a flexible solution for companies when there’s an increase in consumer demand or special projects to complete. But, companies should be aware of the hazards of misclassifying regular employees as independent contractors.
Misclassifying regular employees as independent contractors affects the amount of tax funds government agencies receive. A recent federal study reported that up to 30 percent of companies misclassify employees, which could equate to millions of workers not receiving the benefits guaranteed to them by law and huge tax fund losses for the government. Those losses could also result in higher tax cost for regular employees and businesses. With federal and state agencies facing dismal budget deficits, the Department of Labor is expected to crack down on employee misclassification. President Obama’s 2010 budget anticipates the federal onslaught against misclassified contractors to generate over $7 billion for government agencies over the next ten years. It’s a problem the government is taking very seriously, and you should too.
The responsibility of correctly classifying employees rests on the shoulders of employers. Companies who incorrectly qualify employees as independent contractors could face the cost of back taxes along with any penalties and interest incurred. So, before you utilize an independent contractor, protect your company with accurate documentation and appropriate treatment of the contract workers.
Independent Contractor Treatment
When determining the classification of a worker, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) evaluates factors like instructions and training provided by the company along with a worker’s ability to profit or suffer loss. Workers classified as independent contractors are not required to follow instructions on when, where, and how work is conducted. So, if you’re providing detailed instructions on how work is to be completed or training on company processes, you may be incorrectly qualifying an employee as a 1099 worker. Contractors are not employees and should not be treated as such. Treat your contractors like the independent businesses they are, and avoid any behavior that may have employer-employee connotations.
Independent Contractor Documentation
Businesses audited by the IRS must provide documentation that verifies independent contractors as separate business entities, and demonstrates that the worker’s intent from the establishment of the contract was to serve as an independent contractor. Examples of documentation you should obtain include the contractor’s advertisements and business listings, a business card, insurance certificates, billing invoices, W-9 forms, and 1099’s issued from other companies. Employer records should also include a signed independent contractor agreement that outlines the services the contractor will provide including, specific projects, due dates, locations, expected results, and the determined compensation.
Recruiting an independent contractor can be a flexible and economical solution for your company’s short-term projects. Contracting also allows you access to the specialized skills and expertise you need without the hassle of administrative cost and benefits. And, by obtaining the necessary documentation and displaying the correct conduct towards independent contractors, you can protect your company from the risks of misclassifying workers. If you’re concerned about misclassifying employees, consider using a staffing firm for short-term contractors and project professionals as an alternative. Staffing firms provide the same advantages like cost saving and flexibility without the hassle and stress of interviews and paperwork.
Exchange is a publication of Express Services, Inc., Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Copyright 2010.