How to Hire the Right Employees

When you run your own company, you want your employees to be the best of the best. That means knowing how to judge talent and being able to gauge who is best to hire after their interviews.

So, how do you hire the?right?employees?

Interviewing Skills are a Talent

Some people might think you get a gut feeling just from a handshake with a potential employee. They might say that you need good instincts to hire the right people. Some of that may be true, but there are many more important skills required to hire great employees. In truth, the people who hire the best recruits are the people who have great interviewing skills.

This all begins with being prepared. The best interviewers are well prepared in advance for each of their interviews. They know what they want and they’re not afraid to ask the tough questions.

Still, that’s not all that’s required to hire the right employees…

Using a Scoring System

The interviews themselves are just the beginning of choosing the right employees. Once they’re over, it’s important to take all the information you learned during the interview process and rate each candidate using a “Topgrading” scoring system.

“Topgrading is a methodology of recruiting, interviewing, selecting and retaining top talent developed by Brad Smart and Geoff Smart designed to increase your likelihood of hiring and retaining A players.” –?Rhythm Systems

To successfully score your interviewees this way, there are some key attributes to assess during the interviews.

Attributes to Assess in New Hires

As mentioned above, there are a few attributes you need to look out for when interviewing your potential employees. Some of these include leadership, values, ability to handle pressure, problem-solving, etc. If you’d like to see the full-length list of these attributes, you can find it in my book?Double Double.

Before the recruiting process begins, you need to determine which of these key attributes are most applicable to the role you’re hiring for. Then, as you go through the resumes, group interviews, and one-on-one interviews, look for behaviors and answers that give insight into the candidate’s proficiency in that attribute.

Finally, after all the interviews are finished, assign each applicant a grade out of five for each applicable attribute. Then, after adding up each person’s score, you’ll usually see a clear favorite. More often than not, that person is the person who stuck out as a front-runner all along.

What if More Than One Candidate Scored Well?

If only one candidate scored the best, then you know whom to make an offer to immediately. If your grading system has highlighted another great contender, you should follow that up with at least one more round of interviews before deciding. If they still seem like even contenders, it’s then that you have to listen to your instincts.

Like a lot of decisions that come with running your own business, you need to listen to your gut when picking new employees. Even so, having a simple, proven system in place to grade applicants will help you find those diamonds in the rough and screen out the bad apples.

Do you look out for anything in particular when interviewing potential hires? Let us know in the comments below.

If you have questions or would like more information, I’d be happy to help. Please leave a comment below, and my team will get in touch with you!

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Cameron Herold grew up in a small town in Northern Canada. When his father, an entrepreneur, figured out that Cameron wasn’t going to fit into what they were teaching in school—because of his severe ADD—he taught him to hate working traditional ‘jobs’ and to love creating companies that employed others.

By 18, Cameron already had 14 different little businesses and he knew he loved money, entrepreneuring and business. And by 20 years old, he owned a franchise business painting houses and had twelve employees. He spent his twenties and early 30’s heading up 3 large businesses and coaching over 120 entrepreneurs. He was also the COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, and during his 6.5 years he took the company from 2 million to 106 million.?

Knowing that every CEO needs a strong COO then led Cameron to start the COO Alliance in 2016. He noticed that there were no peer groups for one of the most crucial roles in the company—the Chief Operating Officer/2nd in command.