Beat Your Competition With These New Year’s Hiring Resolutions

Another year has passed and it’s time to make your New Year’s resolutions. While others will hit the gym and chew nicotine gum, you can get a leg up on your competition with these hiring techniques to develop your workforce in 2006.

Hire slow, fire fast

The first and most important resolution you can make in the New Year is to stop waiting until the last minute to hire a new employee and to stop letting the dead weight in your department drag down the rest of the group. Managing is no easy task, and hiring always seems to end up at the bottom of the ‘to do’ list. Because of this, managers always tend to rush the hiring process since they “needed someone yesterday.”

Resolve to make your life easier this year by being proactive when it’s time to hire a new employee. By taking the right amount of time to hire talented candidates, you’ll save yourself future management headaches that arise from hasty hiring mistakes.

Similarly, commit to firing those employees who consistently fail to meet your expectations. This resolution is a bit more difficult to execute as these people rarely do anything to openly call your attention to their poor performance. By setting clear performance expectations, you’ll have a better understanding of when to turn in a pink slip.

stop selling your work

One of the easiest hiring mistakes is getting too excited about great candidates and trying to sell them all the reasons why they should take your job. This can lead to incorrect assumptions about the position, resulting in unexpected turnover and an overall poor fit.

To solve this problem in the New Year, commit to creating realistic performance expectations in writing for every employee you intend to hire. This should include a dated schedule of expected accomplishments for the first 30 to 180 days of employment, depending on the complexity and breadth of responsibilities.

Once you’ve documented these expectations, communicate them openly to any candidate you’re considering. Also, feel free to talk about the struggles and challenges a candidate might have. This open communication should weed out unmotivated candidates and motivate those who are up for the task.

Stop hiring on first impressions

How many times have you hired someone you really liked and it turned out to be a poor performer? We often rely on our emotions when hiring, which leads us to make snap judgments based on our initial impressions. When this happens, great candidates are passed over due to superficial indicators of their ability, while bad candidates are hired for their superior presentation skills. While personality is an important factor, brainpower, technical skills, desire, and core values ​​must also be factored into any hiring decision.

If you tend to be inclined to make snap judgments about job candidates, follow these steps to overcome hiring mistakes based on initial impressions. First, make sure that before you go for an interview, you write down the competency areas you intend to test to get a full picture of your ability. Second, make a firm decision before you go into any interview that you will not let the first few minutes determine your decision. Then be sure to follow through with the proper line of questions that will lead you to the answers you need. Finally, wait thirty minutes after an interview ends to review your notes, and carefully consider the actual responses that were given rather than the style in which they were communicated. .

Create recruiting partners, not recruiting vendors

A study published this year by the American Staffing Association found that Fortune 500 buyers viewed partnering with their staffing providers as an important part of their business. Yet the same study revealed that only 2 in 5 clients view their current staffing providers as “partners.” What this means is that most companies that work with staffing companies view them as a vendor rather than a strategic staffing partner.

If this sounds like your company, you may be missing out on some of the major benefits of a strong partnership with your staffing company. To take this relationship to the next level, make sure your staffing provider has a firm understanding of your business challenges by inviting them to your workforce development meetings. Also, work with your staffing provider to develop a strategic staffing schedule that ensures your staffing challenges are addressed as the business grows and the economy fluctuates.

Make the decision this year to make your hiring process a predictable business practice rather than an unreliable event, and 2006 will be a landmark year for your workforce.