7 Hiring Tips for Small Business Owners

Recruiting, interviewing, and hiring are something of a guessing-meets-intuition game for the average small business owner. In fact, a Main Street Insights survey revealed that nearly 75% of SurePayroll customers have made at least one costly hiring mistake.

One respondent told us why: “Our hiring errors have been largely due to time constraints – we needed to fill a position fast and chose what appeared to be the best applicant from resumes received.”

At SurePayroll, we’ve pinpointed a few helpful steps for small businesses that won’t add a large time or financial burden to your recruiting, interviewing, and hiring steps. You can also watch SurePayroll President Michael Alter discuss his tips for recruiting and interviewing.

• Write a summary of the position, its day-to-day and long-term responsibilities, and experience required. Part of recruiting the right candidates is knowing the position you’re hiring for. An extra 30 minutes writing the job posting usually saves hours of useless interviews. For example, “customer support experience” means you’ll wade through countless resumes. “5+ years in software support via phone and email, preferably in the financial industry” means you’ll receive fewer resumes from more qualified applicants.
• Use targeted recruiting. Advertising on job Web sites doesn’t always produce the best candidates. Consider advertising in publications your target candidates read. Many of these publications have an online presence, so you won’t need to wait for a print date to start recruiting. Reach out to applicable professional organizations
• Ask about work history. You can’t always press for details that intrude upon someone’s personal life, but “why did you leave?” “did you work in between these jobs?” and “how would your responsibilities at your last job apply to this position?” are perfectly legitimate questions.
• Be wary of hypotheticals. Rather than asking what you would do in X situation, see what they have done in X situation. If you want to know what they’d do to reach a sales quota in a tough quarter, ask how they reached quota in their most difficult quarter. We all like to hear people’s reactions to “what famous fictional character do you love?” “what’s your dream job?”  “what would you do with a million dollars?”, but knowing that Joe Smith fantasizes about life as Luke Skywalker as a starting forward for the LA Lakers with a million-dollar yacht doesn’t illustrate anything about his potential job performance.
• Check availability and cover the details. Be honest if your job requires occasional (or frequent) nights and weekends. Remember that you can’t make a good hiring decision without direct, honest answers from the candidate, and they can’t make a good acceptance decision if you aren’t clear about the details. For example, our industry is busiest from mid-December through mid-February. As such, these times are blocked from our vacation calendar. It’s one of the first things we mention to all potential hires.
• Perform  background checks. None of us is a walking polygraph machine. Consider a background check as a way to double check your intuition. You can ensure they have no criminal history as well as verifying the accuracy of Social Security numbers, current and previous addresses, aliases, and birthdates. We offer online background checks starting at $22.95 a pop.
• Assess Personality Traits. Understanding candidates’ underlying personalities helps you determine if, despite experience and a strong interview, they’ll flourish in the position and your company. Someone with the personality traits of a customer service rep (relaxed, empathetic, attention to detail) usually doesn’t fare well in a sales environment where aggressiveness, charisma, and drive reign supreme. Our online assessment tools show what personality traits a candidate possesses and which job roles fit.

Have any other tips? We’d love you to post them in a comment so we can share them with our customers.