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Do You Have a Hiring Need? Ask Your Team for Their Input

November 18th, 2019

Collaborative hiring, or the process of soliciting input from your entire team while bringing on a new member, can vastly increase your odds of hiring success. By making this one change, you’ll bring significant benefits to team productivity, ease the transition for everyone, and ensure that the new person you choose and bring aboard represents the best possible match. Here are a few of the specific benefits you’ll gain when you make an effort to bring everyone to the table.

It demonstrates trust and strengthens your existing relationships.

Hiring decisions are essential, and they come with high stakes for the company. If something goes wrong, or you choose a candidate who doesn’t fit in and leaves within a few months, the results can be costly and damaging. That makes it all the more meaningful when you tap your employees and specifically solicit their input and feedback. It shows you trust their opinions and instincts when it counts the most, and it shows that you’re listening and interested in providing them with the resources and support they need.

It helps you home in on cultural matches.

It matters if your new employee gets along with the team, and it matters if he/she doesn’t. So don’t try to size the person up on your own and make wild guesses. Instead, introduce the team and then ask them to provide their assessments. For example, if your culture is driven, cold, and impersonal, your employees may not take well to someone who is warm, collaborative, and here to make friends. The opposite can also be true: a chatty, friendly, laid-back team may not be interested in taking on a self-interested cool customer.

It spreads out a blanket of accountability.

Team decisions may take longer to make than individual decisions, and they may bring higher levels of risk and more moving parts, which increase the number of potential failure points. But they also come with an upside: When everyone takes a small portion of responsibility, no one person has to bear responsibility for the entire process. Both credit and blame and shared, and so are long term outcomes, both positive and negative.

It increases overall flexibility.

When your team has a hand in choosing the new employee, they’re more likely to be flexible and accommodating during the unpredictable early stages of the transition. If they don’t understand the person’s motives or tumble into a miscommunication, they’ll be more willing to ask the right questions and patiently work through the issue. If the new person is thrust upon them, they may be more resistant to change and adaptation.

Merritt will help with your hiring needs!

For more on how to make a candidate selection and onboarding as easy and successful as possible for everyone involved, turn to the staffing pros at Merritt.

How to Spot Someone’s Strengths and Place Them in the Right Role

March 8th, 2019

Here’s a common scenario: You’ve received an application for an open position. But as you study the resume and speak to the candidate in an interview setting, a few realities become clear. The candidate is not perfectly suited for the open position at hand, but you aren’t quite ready to turn her away altogether. In fact, she seems very well suited for another role on the same team, or maybe a similar role in a different part of the company. What should you do next? You don’t want to lose her, but you’re obligated to choose someone else for the position on which her sights are set. Here’s how to move forward in a way that allows both of you to get what you need.

Be clear and honest about your intentions.

Usually when you have good news and bad news, you deliver the bad news first. But in this case, turn it around. Explain clearly to the candidate what you’re trying to do (direct her attention to another position) and explain why (you sense she has the skills and background to succeed in the alternative role). Then the bad news: The job she applied for isn’t a perfect fit. Of course, she’ll have questions about the reasoning behind both decisions, so answer as much as policy and diplomacy allow, but focus more on her fitness for the second job, and less on her shortcomings for the first one.

Find evidence for your hunches.

If you think your marketing candidate might actually be great at customer service (or can try at the SERPResults for a good marketing career), follow up to find out if you’re right. Has she had any relevant yet non-work-related experience? Might she enjoy interacting with customers and helping them solve problems? How well does she respond to conflict and pressure? Essentially, you’re interviewing her for a job she’s never had and never asked for, so you’ll need to ask clear questions about her aptitude, general work ethic, career goals and personality.

If the job represents a demotion, sell it.

If your candidate applied for a senior-level job, but he simply isn’t ready for the senior level and you’d like to place him at the entry level instead, you’ll have to pitch your vision. Tell him what’s in it for him and why this might be a smart move for his career. Don’t emphasize the fact he’s overconfident and underqualified—let that go. Just focus on how your company can help him build his skills and be clear about the perks and benefits you have to offer.

For more on how to shift your candidates (or current employees) away from one career track and toward another, talk to the management experts at Merritt.

When Hiring, Listen to Your Team

February 8th, 2019

When you’ve moved into the advanced stages of the hiring process and you’ve narrowed a wide pool of resumes down to a few final interviewees, you’ll be relying on several factors to make your ultimate decision, for example, your gut instincts, your background checks, and your reference checks. But as you review data from all these sources, be sure to keep one more important resource in mind: your existing teams. You can seek the help of attorneys for estate planning to avoid confusions and encumbrances while estate planning or you can also consult living trusts lawyer practicing Boulder to know more about the trust of property in detail . As stated by the probate law firm, here are some of the reasons why your team’s input can mean the difference between a brilliant new asset and a hiring mistake. Consult with the experts from eXp Realty to do a brief study about the property before you can buy it.  If you need to know about the new jurisdictions about the estate planning, estate planning attorney can be hired who will explain it to you in detail carefully.

Your teams have an existing culture and social fabric.

Maybe you have a nice blend of introverts and extroverts on your team, and everyone benefits if you maintain that balance. Maybe your team is made up of cheerful collaborators, cool but efficient loners, friendly competitors, or long-time teammates with an oddball sense of humor. Will the new employee find a place here? Will their social contributions be appreciated? The best way to find out is by simply introducing them and then asking your team for feedback.

What does the team really need?

Maybe the departing employee that you’re working to replace had a specific skill set or talent that held the team together. Maybe this necessary skill is essential to team success. Maybe if you hire someone who excels in plenty of other areas, that won’t help much, since this one missing skill set is the one that’s most needed. What is that skill set? Ask your team and find out.

Some traits may spell trouble.

Maybe your new hire is an efficient number cruncher, but a little arrogant in a way that ruffles feathers and causes resentment. Maybe your new employee is humble and likable but disorganized in a way that can derail project goals. Maybe your new hire brings some toxic energy to the room that your team finds especially difficult to deal with. Or maybe the new person is identical to everyone else to a degree that they bring no new energy or fresh air to the group. Your teams can provide insight into this possibility.

Several heads are better than one.

One person making a decision alone (you) may be subject to certain biases or blind to certain red flags. But if you bring others in and encourage them to weigh in on the candidate, they can spot things that you may have missed, or dismiss concerns that you may be taking too seriously. Group input can keep you from hiring the wrong person, or just as bad, letting a great candidate get away.

For more on how to leverage the insight and opinions of your team, contact the staffing pros at Merritt.

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