Making a Great Candidate First Impression

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We’ve talked extensively about employee engagement, but what about candidates? How should you be interacting with candidates? While you may not think it’s important, you need to make a great first impression on candidates. When you don’t make a solid first impression, you aren’t going to capture the right candidates.

Without a great first impression, candidates are more likely to turn away from you and choose a different company. By providing a great candidate experience and making that first impression fantastic, you could end up turning candidates into long-term associates or employees.

Get Your Message On Point

From your website to print collateral, candidates are going to read about your company in one form or another. In today’s world, candidates will most likely learn about you from your website, a job posting, an employer review, or a social media site. It can be difficult to manage all of these messages, but it’s crucial to not only have a defined message for candidates, but also a consistent message. Make sure that all of the content you have in various places match your company, your message, and what you offer candidates.

Test Your Processes

If you’re hiring someone, then you have at least one process in place. During the hiring, interviewing, and screening processes, you could be sending candidates away without even knowing it. You need to review and test these processes every few months to see if there is anywhere you can improve on things. When you have a great application process, a solid interview process, and an engaged onboarding process, you can better attract top talent.

Office Setting

We aren’t necessarily talking about the physical location of your office, though having a great location definitely helps. You need to think about the way your office is laid out—what is visible to candidates when they walk in, and how you will greet those candidates. Having an organized office that is inviting to candidates can help you create a great first impression.

Ultimately, first impressions can be the difference between onboarding a new candidate and not. Make sure you’re creating great experiences.

How do you create a great first impression for candidates? Do you have any tips for others? Leave your stories and suggestions in the comments section below!

Why You Need to Know Your Employees

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Depending on what industry you’re in, you may find it difficult to find the right candidates or even to retain your best employees. From salaries, to commute times, all the way to employee engagement, there are several factors for employee retention rates. One way to help keep top talent in your workplace is to know your employees.

While there might be a traditional separation of executives and managers from their employees, there doesn’t need to be. By learning what employees like about their jobs, what they don’t like, what they spend their free time doing, and what their career goals are, you can better connect with them.

Here are three reasons why you need to know your employees and make better connections:

1. Improve Retention Rates

It’s no secret that retention rates can affect the activities of your business. From a loss of productivity to the costs of hiring a new employee, high turnover rates have a huge impact on your business functions. By taking the time to get to know employees, you increase engagement and can better satisfy employee needs. Don’t just say hi to employees. Instead, encourage them to communicate with you on ways to improve the work environment and other innovative ideas they may have. Open and honest communication between managers and employees can go a long way.

2. Accelerate Growth

You could have a star employee and not know it. You could lose that star employee and lose innovation, productivity, and opportunity to grow your company. If an employee isn’t comfortable or feels like they don’t matter at work, then they’ll keep their ideas to themselves. When this happens, it could mean losing out on opportunities to grow, expand, improve processes, and ultimately grow revenue. Instead, talk with your employees, establish communication channels, and put effort into making them understand you are interested in their ideas.

3. Increase Productivity

While it was mentioned earlier, opening up communication channels with your employees and getting to know their needs can increase and improve productivity. By knowing your employees, they are more likely to care about the work they are doing, which will increase their productivity. When productivity increases, oftentimes, profits increase. By taking a few minutes every day or every week to talk to employees, you have the potential to see dramatic rises in productivity.

How do you get to know your employees? What are some of the employee engagement success stories at your companies? Leave your stories and suggestions in the comments section below!

Making a Great First Impression

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When you are preparing for your upcoming interview, you need to think about the impression you are going to make. There are many factors of a first impression and it’s important to know and understand what they are. While it certainly isn’t a fun thing to think about, it’s important to understand that hiring managers will be judging you during your interview. Making a great first impression could mean the difference of getting a second interview and being dismissed as a serious candidate right away.

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How to Ask Interview Questions

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As you begin searching for great employees to join your team or company, you need to think about the interviews you have to conduct. While knowing the right and wrong questions to ask is important, it’s also important to know how to ask those questions. Interview questions can be misleading, misinterpreted, and you give candidates false hope if you aren’t careful.

While in an interview, you as an employer need to pay special attention to your body language, word choice, and even your tone when asking questions. To help you out, here are five tips on asking interview questions:

1. Pay Attention to Tone

You’re probably a really busy person. You need to fill the position quickly. Maybe you get straight to the point with your questions. Maybe you ask broad questions. No matter what questions you’re asking, you need to pay attention to the tone you’re using when asking them. If you ask them quickly or passively, a candidate could get the impression that you don’t care about them or filling the job. Remember, you’re making a first impression with each candidate, so it’s important that you have a professional tone during the interview.

2. Prepare Your Questions

One of the worst things you can do for the candidate’s experience is to not be prepared. Avoiding this requires not only having questions ready for candidates, but reviewing their resumes and cover letters so that you can ask more specific and targeted questions. Remember, you’re trying to figure out if this person can do the job and also fit in with your company culture.

3. Have a Conversation

Since you’re trying to get to know candidates, it helps to have a conversation during the interview. While there is specific information you need to learn from the interview, it allows them to talk about their experiences, passions, and their ideal job and work setting. Having a more natural conversation with candidates will help them be more relaxed and willing to answer all of your questions.

4. Listen and Respond

While a conversation is a key element to every successful interview, you also need to make sure you are listening to what candidates are saying and respond to that. You have prepared questions, but you also need to ask follow-up questions to bounce off what the candidates are saying. Your interview may end up going a different way than you expected, but that can be a really great thing because you could end up finding the perfect candidate. Listening to candidates will help you learn about them and their experiences as employees.

5. Be Honest

During your interview, it may be tempting to talking about only the exciting or fascinating aspects of the position, but you need to be upfront and honest about everything the position entails. It can turn off recent hires if you tell them one thing during an interview and expect something completely different from them as an employee. Be honest with your expectations and be honest with the job requirements. Remember, you could be talking to someone you are going to hire and work with.

Do you have any tips on asking interview questions? How do you handle interviews? Leave your stories and suggestions in the comments section below!

Positioning for Success: Develop a Process

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Last week we talked about how you need to create purpose in order to better position yourself for success, but it doesn’t stop there. In order to really achieve that success, you have to go beyond the purpose and develop a process for success. While it sounds like a lot of work, you need to put in the time and effort to create the self you want to be.

While this could be applied to your personal life, it also greatly applies to who you are as an employee. When trying to get a new job or start a new career, having a developed process will help. Here are a few things you need in order to position yourself for success:

Passion

We talked about the need for passion when it comes to creating purpose, but it’s also a vital step in developing your process. Without passion, it’s going to be extremely difficult for you to find a job. In fact, if you don’t have passion for what you do, then you need to consider a career change. What are you passionate about? Can you turn that into a career? These are the types of questions to ask yourself before beginning.

Expectations

Do you want to be successful in life and your career? Then don’t expect perfection. Should you always do your best work and work your hardest? Yes, but perfection is impossible. When you set yourself up for perfection, you will fail. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t have high standards, but you need to know your limits and set your expectations within those limitations.

Belief

Above most things, you need to believe in yourself. You need to believe that you will succeed. In order to better position yourself for success, you need to believe that you will be successful. As a step in the process for achieving success, belief is a foundation that you must have. If you don’t believe in yourself, then no one else will and you’ll find the process of getting a job much more difficult.

Self-Evaluation

If you’re caught up in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, then it can be difficult to shift your focus on pursing a new career. Instead of allowing projects, other people, and hobbies to take all of your time, schedule some “me” time. When you schedule time for yourself, you’re able to better focus and think about how to position yourself.

Relationships

When you are starting a new career, looking for a new job, or simply need some professional advice, it helps to have genuine relationships with established professionals. These people can be in your network, they could be your friends or mentors. No matter what, you need to foster genuine relationships and work at keeping them strong because in the professional world, it pays to have friends.

September Associate of the Month

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At Diverse Staffing, we take great pride in our associates and the work they do. Because our associates are so dedicated and productive, we like to take the time to recognize them and their accomplishments. Our Greenwood Recruiting Center launched a new program in August to start recognizing individual associates for their:

  • Attendance records
  • Skills
  • Recognition from clients/placement
  • Time with Diverse Staffing
  • Work performance

Through the Associate of the Month program, Diverse Staffing is able to engage and recognize our most dedicated and talented workers. This month, we’re excited to announce that Charles Downing received the Associate of the Month award for our Greenwood Recruiting Center. Charles is a dedicated Diverse Staffing associate who exemplifies excellent work performance and attendance.

Keep up the great work, Charles!

September Associate of the Month

Hiring Mistakes to Avoid

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Finding the right hires for your company or business is crucial to productivity, profit, and success. In order to grow and succeed the way you want to, you need the best available talent. One way to not get that talent is to fall victim to hiring mistakes. When you don’t know what mistakes to avoid when hiring, you could end up hiring someone who isn’t a great fit for your company or the position you’re hiring for.

Hiring mistakes happen every day. Unfortunately, they can be rather costly. Instead of wasting money on poor hiring decisions, know those mistakes so you can avoid them in the future:

1. Going with your “gut” feeling.

No matter how great your “gut” or instincts usually are, it isn’t enough when it comes to hiring a new employee. You need to have evidence and data to back up your decision. Just because a job candidate looks great on a resume or nails that pre-screen interview, it doesn’t mean they are right for the job. Take your time, get to know candidates, and interview several people before you make your decision.

2. Not knowing what questions to ask.

It’s important to know the right questions to ask before interviewing someone. Asking about educational background and work experiences are great places to start, but ultimately won’t give you enough information. Instead, you need to ask for specific examples that can point you in the right direction of what this candidate will be like as an employee.

3. Checking for cultural fit.

Whether you know it or not, your business has a culture. Before hiring someone, it’s important to know they’ll fit in the culture you’ve created. The best way to do this is to get to know a candidate on a more personal level. You need to make sure their values as an employee line up with your values as a company.

4. Not having a defined process.

Before you ever begin the hiring or interviewing process, you need to have established processes. These processes range from sourcing job candidates all the way to onboarding new hires. Before you get started, think out timelines, questions, and how you will handle all of the paper work.

Do you have any advice for those getting ready to hire? What mistakes have you made in the past? Leave your stories and suggestions in the comments below!