Your company has a new position and you need to fill it fast. What do you do?
Should you just go out and grab the first interested person? Maybe you should do what you see happening a lot: companies taking new talent straight out of college?
No. None of those.
In these situations, you must remain calm and if you want to be successful in the long run:
Trust. The. Process.
We have all seen situations in Human Resources where we are willing to skip a step if we find someone who we think is going to be a good fit for the role.
After looking at a resume and having a small chat, we want to pull the trigger before someone else scoops them. This is the situation when we fail each time.
Guessing can go either way. But, it probably won’t.
When I first started my company, I used to guess just like a lot of people do. But whenever you guess that someone will be a good fit, chances are you will make a mistake. That used to happen to me as I didn’t have processes in place.
Before starting my medical billing company I was mostly in the teaching business. So, I didn’t have any process for comparing. Also, as a High I personality, I am not a process-driven person.
What I used to do is I would hire people who were like me. Fun, making everyone laugh, had a talent for telling stories, charismatic, etc. While this is a great tactic for meeting new friends or having a conversation, it’s a terrible idea when hiring people for different roles.
I wanted to build a business that required people who are detail-oriented, who are going to build claims daily and remotely. High Is are impulsive, have the shiny-object syndrome, and just want to have fun. So having someone like me in a position that requires you to be concentrated and detail-oriented is a recipe for a disaster.
Don’t cheat
It took me a couple of years to set processes in place. It was not an easy job and it took a lot of time and energy both from me and my team. But, I am putting out what I have learned.
There are 5 steps for hiring and retaining people:
- Alignment of core values
- Job benchmarking
- Put people in the role before they get the role
- Ask the right questions
- Trust the process
This process is similar to building a house: you need a firm foundation on which you will build the rest of the structure.
One of the most important things is to not cheat, not skip steps. Or: trust the process.
Do it all the way through and you will get better candidates. I guarantee that.
You will spend less time re-hiring people, you won’t need to waste that much energy and money on training people or getting certificates for them, your HR will not waste time…
If you don’t put the process in place you can expect to be going through resumes and interviews, guessing which candidate is the best, training them, making arrangements on the team due to the newcomer, getting licenses, and different requirements for them, putting in a lot of energy… And then seeing them walk out the door after a few weeks, leaving you to go through the whole process once again.
Do you want to hire and keep good people?
Trust the process.