How To Hire Winning Employees
for your Company

Here’s Tip from Barry Shamis, who is without a doubt the most knowledgeable person in the country on recruiting and hiring and retaining winning employees.

One of my associates sent me an article on how to interview people perfectly every time. The secret... Just ask four questions. I am not going to even insult you by telling you what the questions are, but suffice it to say, they don't make any sense.  Most importantly, if you do ask the four questions, you will find yourself in a position you are not qualified to be in. You find yourself in a position of having to figure some¬one out or interpret something.  This is much better left to trained professionals. The last thing you want to do is to get into another person's head. (You should be afraid of what you might find.)

When I designed the Selecting Winners workshop in 1984 (wow, do I feel old!), one of the main things I wanted to accomplish was to make sure my clients didn't find themselves in a position where they were not qualified. It is so easy to tell someone to "figure out a person" or "read their intent" or "find out what makes them tick," but you and I just aren't going to get that right most of the time.

Don't get me wrong. You need to observe everything in an interview, but drawing conclusions based on iso¬lated guesses or intuitions is not a great way to choose proven winners. What you really want to do is find a person that will behave in a way that you know is suc¬cessful in your environment.

The best way to go about this is to use a system that gives you the highest probability of being successful.  Of course, you know that the system I am talking about is my Selecting Winners System. As we approach our 20th anniversary next month, we did a little homework just to see how many lives we have touched. In round numbers, we have worked with 473 companies, trained more than 53,000 individuals, conducted 87 public seminars, held seminars in 43 countries and have had more than 11,000 people purchase our information products. Whew, that was a lot of work.

The reason I share this with you is to impress upon you that THIS SYSTEM WORKS! Let me break down the steps so you understand what you need to do to hire great employees.

Step One: Know What You Are Looking For
It is critical to identify the knowledge, skills and abili¬ties necessary to be successful on the job. Don’t make the mistake of listing a bunch of ambiguous terms like sales skills, attitude, and flexibility. You need to clearly state, in terms of behaviors, exactly how the person needs to
handle the tasks and situations on your job to be successful.  This is a lot of work and is definitely the hard part of the process.

Take your time, develop your list of requirements and be certain to have good definitions, not just labels. With this in hand, you are ready to launch the rest of your hiring process. Without this profile, you are flying blind and once again will find yourself in a position for which you are not qualified.

Step Two: Recruiting
Put together a plan of how you are going to generate candidates. Like any other plan, it should have a sched¬ule, a budget and responsibilities assigned. Where will you get the best return on your investment of time and money?  What has worked for you in the past? Don't just guess,
put some thought and effort into the process and you will not end up wasting time and money.

Step Three: Data Gathering
I have always said that the more data you have, the better your hiring decisions. Most people just conduct an interview and make a decision (or worse, they ask just four questions!).  This is not enough. You need to get as much information as possible. Here are your options. Phone screen, phone interview, first interview, second interview, interviews with other members of your team, reference checks, background checks, and applicant testing. You have a number of options and should use as many as time will allow, but. never less than 3.

Or, you can ask just four questions, or use your gut feel, or just plain guess. You don't have to leave your hiring decisions to chance. And, you don't want to put yourself in a position where you are not qualified.