Editor's Note:
Business works best when employees and employers work together for
the good of the company. Employers who recognize that their
employees are their most important asset keep them in the loop,
make them part of the company and don't treat them as an
expendable tool.
Developing people
power in your employees does not reduce your authority or your
level of control in management. Employee people power means
that your employees can participate, that they are appreciated,
and that your employees know where the company is going so they
can be a part of the team.
Five Essential Hiring Practices
by: Jan B. King
Recruiting and hiring are often done in haste, leaving the
company to repent in the long run. Today, there’s a reason to be
concerned about negligent hiring. Negligent hiring means you and
your company can be sued if one of your hires injures other
employees, especially if you could have foreseen a problem but did
not do a thorough check of the new employee before hiring.
The following list of five essential hiring practices establishes
the minimum you should follow:
1. Require outside testing. Allow a competent, impartial
professional interviewer to administer both paper and pencil and
verbal tests. Professional testing firms can administer valid
psychological tests for intelligence, stability, even determinations
of addictive or dishonest personalities, as well as skills tests of
important technical abilities in your workforce. I find testing
often validates a suspicion I already had but wasn’t yet ready to
come to terms with.
2. Conduct a rigorous personal interview. This includes asking
general attitude questions, how you would manage your boss
questions, how you would manage your staff questions, questions
relating to the applicant’s understanding of the financial
workings of a business and your department’s role in the
business’s overall success, questions relating to the
applicant’s ability to set goals and his or her expectations about
achieving goals, questions relating to specific skills required for
the job, and general communications required by the job.
3. Arrange a peer group interview. This part of the process
encourages applicants to speak more freely and helps determine how
comfortable they will be in working with their peers. Follow up with
a meeting of everyone involved in the hiring decision to determine
if there is a group consensus about the applicant’s suitability
for work at your company.
4. Do a background check. Don’t neglect this, even if it is an
employee’s cousin or your competitor’s best salesperson. It’s
very easy to set up an account with an investigative firm online and
to relatively quickly and inexpensively find out if the applicant
has a criminal record or a history of DMV problems, lawsuits
involving previous employers, workers’ compensation claims, and so
forth.
5. Do a reference check. You can conduct these over the phone,
but they may involve a request in writing. Reference checking is
less effective than it used to be, although you may still find a few
people who are willing to talk. Most former employers play it safe
and verify only dates of employment and salary.
Document that you took all of these steps and you’ve gone a
long way toward protecting yourself against a charge or negligent
hiring. And more importantly, you’ve taken the first steps toward
finding an employee who can trust and with whom you can establish a
successful employment relationship.
