Brandon W. Jones

Recently I spoke to a manager friend of mine.  He mentioned a major complaint he has with many leaders in the business world.  He said that there are far too many “fire happy” managers.  They are fire happy because they fail in one of the following three areas: 

1. They don’t hire the right people from the beginning. 
2. They don’t train the people properly.
3. They don’t have a good system in place to retain the employees.

Because it all starts with hiring the right person, this post will cover techniques for hiring the right person.

1. Know your how to do your job.  Leaders need to know their own job really well before they can begin hiring the right people to work for them.  They must know the specifics of their job on a daily basis.  They must also know what it takes to do a good job in their current position.  They must be the expert in their department, so they can answer any questions that people might have of them.  Included in being the expert in their department, they must also have a very good idea of what their employees do in their jobs.

2.  Know what type of person you are looking to hire.  Once the leader knows how to do their own job well, they will know what to look for when hiring employees.  They must set up specific metrics identifying what they are looking for so they can recognize when the person applying for the job is qualified to do the job. 

3. Know how to determine the right person for the job.  When hiring someone new, leaders must have a specific criterion for what they want.  Prior to doing any interviews it is very important to set a standard that the applicants must live up to if they are to get the job.  The leader should have a list of metrics they are looking for in the interviewees so they can accurately measure the performance in the interview.  The object of the interview is to identify the best applicant for the position which can only be done if you know what you are looking for.  The list of metric will help you as the interviewer to know what you are looking for and give them method for grading the performance of the interviewees that is specific and measurable.

Once the interview has taken place and a new person is hired, the person must be trained.  Correct training makes all the difference in the world.  I will discuss the importance of training in Leaders, Train Your People: Part 2.

Have you had any experiences where the wrong person was hired for the job?  What caused it to happen?