Hiring Employees and Passing the Torch

Managing a business isn't easy--especially if you're managing your business without help. Unfortunately, if you've been maintaining a business for a long time, it can be hard to delegate tasks to other people. However, if you follow a few basic hiring practices and create a solid hiring strategy, it's not difficult to find well-qualified, dependable employees.

Hiring strategies vary from company to company, and it's important that you develop a strategy that works for you. However, before you implement any new hiring practices, you need to iron out the details of the position that you're prepared to offer. Take some time to consider your options, and come up with an outline for your open position. Some of the things you need to consider include:

• What the job duties will be,
  
   
• If you need a contractor or an employee,
  
   
• Whether you will offer employee benefits,
  
   
• The amount of time you need an employee to work, and
  
   
• How much you're willing to pay your new employee.

Complete hiring strategies also detail the methods you're going to use to find potential employees. To find the best candidates, you should use multiple methods to find employees. You also shouldn't stop networking after the position is filled. You never know when you're going to meet a great future employee. There are numerous methods you can implement into your new hiring practices to find potential employees, including:

• Placing ads on online classified websites,
  
   
• Placing newspaper ads,
  
   
• Reviewing resumes on job search websites,
  
   
• Attending local job fairs and other events,
  
   
• Contracting a hiring agency to find you employees on a temporary basis with the option to hire, and
  
   
• Using online social media sites to find potential job candidates.

When you're ready to implement your new hiring practices, you need to determine how you will weed through the candidates. While it's important to find someone who can do the job, it's also important to find someone who will work well in your work environment. After you put together a list of characteristics and skills that you'd like your new employee to have, you can implement a hiring procedure. Some of the things you should consider to help you narrow down your applicants include:

• Group interviews to see how well your potential candidates interact with each other,
  
   
• An employee assessment to ensure that your employee possesses the proper job skills,
  
   
• A questionnaire to help you gauge whether a candidate has the correct personality traits for the job,
  
   
• Short phone interviews to prescreen the potential employees, and
  
   
• Face-to-face interviews.

While hiring practices vary from company to company, developing your own methods doesn't take long. Once you learn about various hiring practices, create your own strategy, and start looking for potential employees, the process becomes less overwhelming. Finding the right person makes it easier to delegate your day-to-day tasks, and developing a hiring strategy is the first step you need to take.

(Photo courtesy of Ambro / freedigitalphotos.net)