One of the biggest complaints of hiring managers is their inability to find and keep great full-time employees. The unemployment rate in the United States is 3.8%, meaning the number of unemployed Americans had fallen. Despite this reality, managers are attempting to hire for a specific “fit,” but that’s not a good strategy.
Hiring managers can take several steps toward improving their odds of recruiting and retaining great employees. Here are some steps to implement:
1. Prioritize
Recruiting may involve more than one interview. Therefore, look through your interviews and take note of those who emphasized their desire to do a good job, and make those candidates your priority. Those are the employees you want to pay the most attention to — your high performers. Instead of trying to fix poor performers, reward your high or highest performers and lift the team.
2. The Interview
Asking the right interview questions is critical. According to research conducted by Leadership IQ, within 18 months, 46% of newly hired employees will experience failure. When looking more closely at this survey, it reports that 26% of these new hires are failing because they can’t implement or accept feedback. The wrong temperament for the job makes up 15% of these job failures, and 11% are for skill deficiencies. These statistics suggest that the interview questions found candidates with the right skill set but the wrong emotional intelligence.
3. Terminations
No one likes the idea of terminations, but they’re necessary. All employees experience a bad day from time to time. However, several consecutive bad months is something management shouldn’t be tolerating. Your employees should be consistently working toward creating great impressions not only for you but the company as a whole. Look at how hard they’re trying in the beginning. Think about that, and, if that’s not their current performance, it’s likely not going to improve six or nine months from now.
4. The Workplace
What kind of workplace are you creating? Is it one your employees are looking forward to entering daily? If you want to recruit and retain great employees, it’s your responsibility to create a workplace they want to come back to every workday. Keep the environment inspired and remove all mediocrity. Otherwise, you’ll risk losing candidates who will create the environment you’re aiming to create.
5. Take a Close Look at Yourself
Are you the reason why your company is experiencing a high turnover rate? Of course, this question is not easy to answer. However, it must be examined if you want to hire and retain great people. Many hiring managers will blame others before taking responsibility for their poor decisions. That’s a mistake because, if you’re correcting errors and behaviors, your candidate pool will experience significant improvements. Once you examine what’s going on and take ownership of your part of the situation, you’ll see the creation of a working environment that will succeed.
Final Thoughts
Don’t forget to make sure your staff always feels well-appreciated. After candidates are settled into their new positions, saying thank you goes a long way. Adding monetary rewards, thank you gifts, and bonuses takes that thank you even further. When you tie raises to achievement and accomplishments, your staff retention will increase more than any other action you can take.
