Orange County Register

Today’s tip is from Gregg Landers, director at CBIZ Accounting Tax and Advisory Services who leads the firm’s growth management consulting practice helping coach and advise growth-focused companies to successfully manage the challenges associated with that growth.

What steps should business owners take to ensure that they are bringing on a person who will not only help take their company to the next level, but also be a cultural fit? 
 
This is the critical question for any growth-focused company. Hire for tomorrow not today.  An organization first must know where it wants to be in three to five years before it can expect its managers to hire individuals who can get it there. 

A common mistake is to hire for the needs of today only to find out too soon that the individual is not the right long-term person for tomorrow.
 
Qualify applicants on technical capabilities and use performance oriented questions. Qualify on capability factors such as education and awareness of key technical elements of the job.

Avoid only hiring people who have performed the same job in the past. Instead identify those handful of objectives the individual needs to accomplish for the organization to consider it a great hire.  Base your questions on how the individual would approach accomplishing those objectives. This is how you find future stars. 
 
Hire on cultural fit. Identify the handful of key traits necessary for the individual to be successful in the role and consider each candidate against those traits. An example might be “assertiveness” or “team building.” 
 
In the end there are only two choices — hire well or manage hard.  Effective hiring requires more than these initial steps but if you apply these steps well you will see a significant improvement in the quality and cultural fit of your new hires.

If you have a strategy, tip or resource to help small businesses, click here to send it to me. If I use it, I’ll give you credit and link to your Web site.

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