If you own a small business, hiring new employees can be a difficult and tense undertaking. Not only is it something you don’t have any experience with, but the decision that you make could make or break your business. A company is only as good as the people who it consists of, so hiring the wrong people early on can have disastrous results. Here are a few pointers to help you make the right choices when hiring employees for your small business.
Look For Enthusiasm
There are many qualities that you could look for in determining who you want to be your employee. Conventional wisdom would say that experience is the most important factor, and there is an element of truth to that. However, the single most valuable factor you could look for is enthusiasm. Ultimately, the best employee you can have is someone who genuinely wants to be working for you. Everything else can be taught, but passion and enthusiasm are ingrained traits, and someone who is enthusiastic but inexperienced will yield more long-term value than someone who is experienced and apathetic.
Hire Who You Know
You’ve probably heard the saying that in business, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Well, there’s a reason for that: most often, it’s easier to reliably hire out of a pool of people you know and have experience with than complete strangers who have responded to an ad. Utilizing existing relationships makes your search for an employee easier, allows you to already know (to an extent) how well you will work with that person, and allows you to help them by offering a job. In a small business situation, it’s usually a win all around, although there are some instances where the working relationship backfires and the social relationship suffers as a consequence.
Be Professional
When conducting an interview, it’s extremely important that you come off professional. Generally, it should be the interviewee that is the nervous one. If you are noticeably anxious during your interview, not only will that turn off prospective employees, it also could set a bad standard for your working relationship if you do hire any of them. Not being well organized is another thing that can make you appear unprofessional, and potentially make people that interview with you less inclined to accept a position, if you were to offer them one.
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