Having a successful business is the goal of any marketing executive, but with that success comes new challenges. One challenge businesses face is accommodating growth. Hiring new employees to handle increased demand is stressful and often riddled with confusion. But when your business needs more production and it is clear you must onboard help, then the question becomes what characteristics you are looking for.
Yes, expertise is obvious, but often, people have personalities that clash. Yet you can’t just hire based on personality, because essential tasks require know-how and ability. How do you reconcile the disparity prospective employees bring? Here are some tips for hiring employees with skill sets and personalities that will help your company grow.
Ask Good Questions
Ultimately, we would love to hire the ultimate cross-section of skill and culture. To gain an employee who is skilled and fits in is the dream, but that dream is hard to find, and when the dream falls into our laps, we won’t know if we don’t ask the right questions.
Some of the best questions to ferret out cultural fits come from common internship interview questions. An intern works for free usually, so the hire is more designed to determine if the intern fits in rather than brings valuable skills. Ostensibly, the intern would be learning the skills, not providing them.
Determine Relatable Skills
Because business and technology changes so quickly, having cross-applicable skills can be a real game changer. If an applicant has an in-demand skill but is limited to that ability, it might become a liability if the industry grows in a new direction. It is particularly helpful to understand the what professional skills are in high demand because those skills often have a shelf life. If the applicant has skills in multiple buckets, particularly hot, in-demand skills, they might have too much value to overlook.
When determining relatable skills, don’t forget soft skills. We often lose sight of items on the business skills list, like leadership, collaboration, time management, and communication skills when we are determining an applicants fit. It can be helpful to see the applicant as not merely filling a momentary need, but how that applicant might progress through the company or bring valuable intangibles. Some employees make those around them better. That can be a huge benefit to a company, but it is a difficult skill to identify at times, especially because all applicants put their best foot forward in interviews, often blurring who actually possesses these soft skills.
Cost-Benefit Analysis
When determining the intersection of culture vs skill it is important to understand the rarity of the skill you are looking for and the difficulty that skill is to obtain. For example, if you are building rockets, it is more important that your hire understand rocketry, physics, and math than it is that that person doesn’t microwave fish in the break room. However, some skills can be developed with exposure and training over time.
When this is the case, investing in someone with talent (perhaps undeveloped) who also possesses cultural qualities that are desired makes sense. Employees who feel the company is investing in their development also show more loyalty and tend to be more motivated workers out of a sense of being valued.
Be Realistic
It is also important to be realistic about the pay you are offering. If you are hiring a position at a low wage, you shouldn’t expect someone to have elite, specialized and rare skills. That is unrealistic. If you are expecting the candidate to possess elite skills, the pay should be commensurate and the screening process should be more focused on skill. The broader and softer the skills that are sought are, the more you can lean towards culture.
A Culture of Competence
One factor that can undermine a company’s culture is if the employees feel like there are people doing jobs poorly or they don’t have the proper skills for the job. This causes resentments and social tribalism. Although no company wants to hire a difficult person, coworkers feel put upon if they must do extra work because some employees can’t fulfill their duties competently. When someone is efficient and highly skilled, their personalities their coworkers often find their personalities redeeming instead of difficult. Remember, it is a work environment. People spend a lot of time at work. They feel stressed and they don’t want that stress added to, even if they like the person adding it.
Conclusion
A successful business is a great accomplishment. But with that success comes evolving challenges. These challenges are the best problems to have, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t problems. The key is to understand the value of the position you are hiring for, its skill rarity and difficulty and the value soft skills can bring to your company. When you have these concepts properly in perspective, it makes hiring the right candidate easier, whether it is for culture or for skill. With any luck, you can get a combination of both.
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