Everyone wants to have qualified employees with years of experience, but to hire a perfect employee is hard.
I have been in the manager position for 10 years and still think finding the right employees is one of the most difficult recruitment tasks. So how can you actually hire experienced employees?
When you want to hire experienced employees, do not focus only on the amount of work experience. Instead, find signs of passion, high motivation, and dedication in their portfolio. Treating a profession like a hobby is a trait that compensates for many years of working experience.
See the step-by-step guide on how to find and hire employees:
# 1 Review all the unsolicited applications
These are sent by people who noticed your company and dedicated their time to you even though you were not searching for anyone. They already showed some interest and motivation to work for you, and it is the first thing you should look at when you try to hire someone new.
# 2 Write a job posting
Start with a good job title and at least one thing that makes a position attractive for applicants. Do not be too creative in this part if you want to take advantage of common searched keywords. Include few details at the introduction of the job post that will show the most exciting advantages of the job you are offering.
Post the job on your website, on your social media and the popular job posting sites (may differ from country to country).
You can post your job offer for free on Indeed, Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and others.
# 3 Ask your employees for referrals
Another great channel for finding motivated and experienced people are your own existing employees. It can make a hiring process faster, create a better culture fit with your company and help with positions that are hard to fill in.
Ask your employees, clients, suppliers, anyone who relates to your company can give you a good referral.
# 4 Conduct job interviews
What is better than a candidate who says he can do everything? A candidate that can show you he can do something . Review people’s portfolios and invite the most interesting candidates for a personal interview.
Ask open-ended questions and have them prepared beforehand. Stick to the same prepared set of questions for all the candidates. That way you can decrease your personal bias and better compare all the applicants.
# 5 Check provided references
A quick phone call to the previous employer can tell you more than hours of interviewing. It can make the last difficult decision of who to hire much easier.
Ask about the candidates work ethics, strengths and weaknesses, reasons why they left the previous job position.
# 6 Notify rejected candidates
And do that as soon as you can. Ask for permission to keep their resume in your database. For the next time you need to hire a qualified professional, you can revisit previous applicants and save yourself some time.
The word about you and your company will spread among the professionals in the field. If you leave people without response, do not expect to get good candidates next time you are looking to expand your team.
Is it always worth it to hire the experienced employees?
I have had around 5 – 6 people at the job interview between the age of 40 – 60 years old and I have never hired anyone at that age. If you have just a small business (under 10 people), salaries are probably the biggest expense you have.
And although I would like to hire experienced people, the salary requirements of these people were between 50% – 100% higher than the salary required by younger people. Many will say that you need to hire the best people you can get and invest a lot of money into experienced employees is worth it.
From my personal experience you can hire very dedicated people who are willing to work for half the salary and will learn new things fast on the job. As I look at it, the “high quality” employee is someone who really wants to work for you. And that is why I always choose to hire will over skill.
“Hire will over skill.”
When I see that someone is very motivated, I cannot really justify paying twice as much for an employee who would have a bigger experience when they have the same spirit, dedication, and passion to work.
You can google how many advantages it brings to hire experienced employees, and I am not saying that those advantages are worthless. Experienced employee can bring a lot to the company.
But that does not mean that it is worth it for you, for your business and for your current situation. If you can not afford to pay for an experienced employee, or simply do not want to pay that much, find someone who really wants to work for you and is willing to learn.
What are the risks of hiring an inexperienced employee?
The biggest risk is that you will spend way too much time training this person. Of course, you can distribute your workload and entrust one of your employees to go through the onboarding process.
If you hired someone based on the employee referral, you are in luck. The employee who gave you the recommendation will probably try to help the newly hired person to succeed.
Remember you must check all the work done by your new inexperienced employee. You do not want to harm your reputation because of not-so-good work done by a new person in your company. Again, you can ask an experienced and trustworthy employee to overlook a new trainee to save some time.
Get equipped with patience as you can find yourself explaining things you consider as a basic knowledge. You are now transitioning between an employer and teacher.
It helps to have a clear job description and an onboarding routine.
Inexperienced employees are often eager to learn and want to prove themselves. Time you put in the newly hired employees will pay off fast.
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