My advice to small business owners looking to grow this year is simple (and obvious): HIRE CORRECTLY. When you’re first building a team or adding more to a small, close-knit team, getting the hire right is even more crucial. A wrong hire could be disastrous and really set you back.
The entire culture and modus operandi around recruitment in this day and age revolves around 2 things: a CV and interview impressions. And how many times have we been fooled by these? The problem with them is it blinds us to the truth of a candidate, and we can be fooled by the ‘smoke and mirrors’ of the hiring process. We might discount great staff, or we might assume someone is ‘perfect’ using the wrong information. We have found this to be true time and time again.
How many times did that candidate you were sceptical of prove you wrong and were awesome? How many times has someone you thought was a sure-fire candidate turned out to be terrible?
78% of people lie in the hiring process, so it’s VITAL you get as much tangible evidence of who you’re hiring, BEFORE you hire them.
What this looks like specifically is:
- a see-all personality profile,
- a through check of performance and achievements,
- A test of their knowledge or experience in alignment with the requirements of the role, and
- most importantly; a reference check that checks & verifies the candidates claims from those previous screening steps.
Without this, you’re really flying quite blind. Liable to use things like gut instinct, first impressions, previous experiences, recruiter buzzwords in your ears, etc.
My heart lies with small businesses who are led by owners who value, reward, mentor and develop their staff & candidates who work hard, create valuable results and want to build something great. So let’s find them and team them up!
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Maddie Jones is the Director and MD of Talent X; a boutique recruitment firm that is challenging the status quo of the recruitment industry. Frustrated by the low ethics and conflicts of interest that exist in the recruitment industry, Maddie and her team are flipping the entire process on its head.
She believes that Talent X really shines a light on brilliant but sometimes overlooked candidates, and they find real ‘gems’ in the candidate pools.
Ah- but which companies, then, deserve gems? Through a lot of surveying, interviewing and research, Maddie and her team have found that true performers want to be part of companies who train, develop & mentor their staff and who have a management team that is capable, organised and driven. Most staff don’t leave companies, they leave managers.
So not only does Maddie campaign for better candidates, she campaigns for better managers.
Director and MD of Talent X
Media Contact
For more information or to speak with Maddie Jones, please contact Yujie Fan via [email protected]
