“Teamwork is so important that it is virtually impossible for you to reach the heights of your capabilities or make the money that you want without becoming very good at it.” ~Brian Tracy
Why is building the best team important?
It’s important because I know that you have a big vision for your business, and to get there, you can’t do it on your own. You and your business need the best resources you can muster and develop. And you want to do it in a way that the business becomes less dependent on you to do it all and worry about everything.
To use a sporting analogy, you are building a team and you are selecting the best players for each position on the field. And not only do you want them to be the best in their positions, you want them to work as a team with each other.
One of the biggest mistakes employers can make in the hiring process is to use the interview to sell the job and the company to the candidate. That’s not what it’s for. The interview is to help you create a picture of how the candidate relates to his or her work and has dealt with challenges in the past.
This is an evaluation opportunity to find the right players for your game.
Another good thing to remember is that some people are, if you like, professional ‘interviewees’. They know the jargon and the language, but don’t necessarily deliver. And there are others who miss out on jobs because they interview poorly, but do have the requisite skills and attitudes.
So, you need to develop an interview process that will look beyond the usual interview style to find the interviewee’s prior experience and values, and help you to predict future performance.
No matter how skillful you are at interviewing, you need an evaluation process that allows you to quantify or measure your own feelings and perceptions in a way that gives solid meaning to the way you weigh up the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate.
While you will have a system and procedures to help you through the interview process, the biggest discipline and skills you can develop will be listening and questioning.
One of the biggest mistakes is trying to ‘sell’ the job and the business to the candidate.. And remember…recruiting is just like Marketing. It’s just that your target ‘customer’ is a future employee and team member – and you are going to see a lot of them day in and day out. You need enough information to make a solid case to yourself and perhaps others for the hiring decision you are about to make.
In Part Three next week, I will be going over the recruiting and hiring steps and reviewing the traditional interview process to illustrate where mistakes are made.
Until then…
P.S. Learn more about working ON your business–talk to the coach! Click here to connect with me!