5 STEPS FOR MORE EFFECTIVE HIRING THIS YEAR

It may be the middle of January, but it’s never too late for companies to start thinking about hiring the best employees they can. In other words, it’s always a good time to be thinking about such things.
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Nothing has as much of an impact on a company as how well it hires. A bad hire can be costly, even more so than it appears on the surface. Lost time, lost energy, lost resources . . . they all factor into the financial equation.

With that in mind, below are five action steps for more effective hiring in the New Year:
#1—Be deliberate about your plans for hiring.
It’s easy to get carried away by what’s happening today—right now. While day-to-day business operations are certainly important, letting them distract you from your long-range hiring goals can be more than counter-productive. It can be detrimental to the bottom line.
#2—Analyze last year’s good hires . . . and bad ones.
Specifically, why do you consider the good hires to be good? What were their characteristics? How did you find them? What do they all have in common? Conduct the same analysis for those hires that didn’t pan out the way you had hoped, and then put that information to use.
#3—Stay on top of industry and marketplace trends.
Once again, this requires a proactive approach, as opposed to a reactive one. Where do you get your information now? How would you rate that information? What new sources of information might benefit you this year?
#4—Evaluate your current staff (regardless of when they were hired).
One component of effective hiring is workforce management. Which of your current employees would you consider “top performers”? What percent of your workforce do they comprise? Make sure that they’re recognized for their performance, and also make sure to communicate expectations to everybody else.
#5—Stay one step ahead of your needs.
Staying with the theme of being proactive rather than reactive, a company almost always makes a better hire when it’s able to forecast when it will need to do so. That means seeking out qualified candidates before the position officially becomes open—so you can fill it with the best candidate in the shortest amount of time.

How prepared is your company to make better hires this year . . . and more of them? A proactive approach might mean the difference between a good year and a great year.