Hiring with a Process
The process of hiring great individuals is one of the most important
responsibilities of management and one of the least organized! Having
great sales and marketing employees can propel an average or struggling
company to greatness and can elevate a great company to market
dominance. There are a number of steps you should take (and which most
companies don’t) when hiring key employees that include:
Writing a thorough and well thought out job description
Developing a Skills/Behavior matrix for ranking the candidates
Gaining consensus from everyone involved with the hiring on the above
items
Developing a call screening ranking matrix to filter out lower quality
candidates
Compiling a list of interview questions based on the Skills/Behavior
matrix that will allow you to score the candidates
Tracking the progress of each candidate through the process and don’t
let candidates become stale
Using a corporate visit as a way solidify your final choice
Checking supplied and “back door” references on your candidates.
Once a candidate has been hired, there are a few key steps you should
take to increase their chances of success:
The period after your new hire has resigned their prior position and before
starting their new job is very critical. Stay in touch on a regular
basis making them feel like their new company is as comfortable as the
one they are leaving.
The first few weeks of a new position should be spent learning about the
company, the people, the product, and the customers.
A
set of 30/90/180 day goals should be agreed upon within the first 2
weeks. If the position is commission/bonus based, the goals should be
tied to a piece of this incentive pay.
Use the first couple of months to learn as much about the person as you
can. The stronger the bond you build early on the greater the
commitment you will see from this hire.
Hiring new employees can sometimes feel like a daunting and very time
consuming task. However, if you take time up front to create a well
defined hiring process and develop the tools necessary to uniquely
identify the best candidates, the chances of hiring the right person for
the position in the shortest amount of time will be greatly increased.
Also, taking an active role in managing the new hire's "onboarding" into
the organization will ensure that you get the maximum value from your
new hire -- and develop a committed member of the team.
Do you have other effective sales techniques that
you
want to share? We welcome your input.
Drop us a line.
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