Recruit the right staff and coach them to deliver

For the past few years, the media has been sharing businesses’ complaints about the lack of qualified workers. Recruiters and organization leaders moan about poor work histories, poor skills, and poor attitudes. The labor pool is overflowing with poor quality candidates. What’s an organization to do?

Your brand is defined in hundreds of moments of truth each day. People used to tell an average of 13 people about their experience with poor service. The growth of technology gives them the power to tell millions through the use of email, social networking, and blogs. You can’t afford one unhappy customer.

Retain the good people you have. If finding good people is difficult, you can’t afford to lose the good ones you have. Think of them as customers and apply techniques to keep them just as you would create and execute a customer retention strategy. Treat them like the partners in growing your organization: Reward them appropriately. Develop a suggestion program and act on their ideas. You can’t afford to take good staff members for granted any more than you can afford to take good customers for granted.

Identify a target market and a clear profile of the ideal employee
You may have identified a crystal clear target market and have drawn a profile of your ideal customer. Do the same for your staff and develop a plan to proactively attract more top quality applicants that are similar to the great employees you have.

Commit to hiring only the best
Recognize that it takes two or three times as long as you’d like to hire good people; but that time investment is worth it when you think about the damage inflicted by a poor hire. Good employees would rather work harder than put up with rotten coworkers and poor employees will destroy the work you’ve done to grow a brand.

Make educating and developing your staff a priority
Never assume that someone knows or understands what you’re telling them to do. Most people will pretend they understand what you’re saying because they don’t want to embarrass themselves by admitting they don’t get it. Questions like “Do you understand?” or “Do you have any questions” are a waste of time. Ask questions about the information or process so the employee has to give you the answer or ask them to explain the process to you or to a coworker to verify they understand.

Screen for attitude and interests, train for the skills you can. Experts agree that the critical skills for success are the emotional intelligence skills that people should bring to the job. People do their best in a job that matches their natural personality and interests. Applicants that are late, appear uninterested, lack enthusiasm, or are rude to the person who gave them the application should never be hired no matter how good their skills are.

Your next step: Evaluate your current recruitment and retention strategy. Need help?

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