Creating Your Team in 2014

2013 has been absolutely awful for me from a staff point of view. There’s little point in re-hashing the problems but I can share with you that the difficulties of the year have had a very negative effect on the business and it’s taken some time and a considerable amount of effort to get things back on track. It’s also taken a personal toll on me.

Bringing in the wrong employees just causes pain. How often have I said that to you? Well, I do practice what I preach and if after correction, the employee won’t step up to our standards, it’s time to part company. Done a fair bit of that this year ...

Currently I am recruiting and I am exercising considerable rigour in the process. It’s not just about getting in the right technical skills (and Heaven knows that’s hard enough),you also need to ensure that the cultural fit is right.

There’s a lots to juggle in recruitment. Your process must be compliant and nothing is included that is unlawful. You also need to ensure that the job description is accurate and up-to-date and the person specification is correct. Devise a data collection process that checks each of you essential requirements.

Costs must be managed (recruitment can be very expensive) and you should give some thought to trawling the market.

You can waste a huge amount of time seeing people who aren't really that good so do some remote testing. I start with a 15 minute phone interview that tests technical knowledge. If the technical knowledge is reasonable there’s a good reason to move to the next stage. At that stage I check detail consciousness, ask what advice the applicant would give on a couple of interesting live cases; a personality profile and a competency based interview.

Taking on staff can be essential to grow your business. Taking on the wrong ones can wreck all your hard work. Nothing is 100% but if you take the time to construct a good process you will substantially reduce the risk of bringing in the wrong people with all the waste of time, money, heart ache and heartburn that brings.

Good luck!,

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