If you’re a business owner or hiring manager, you may be making this one mistake over and over: looking for the perfect employee.
Searching for perfection in any area only ends in disappointment. When it comes to hiring staff, the continual hunt for a flawless employee leads to unrealistic expectations, and continued difficulty finding and keeping otherwise excellent team members. No individual is perfect and each of us has strengths and weaknesses. The best workplaces celebrate employee successes while accepting their weaknesses. And the strongest employees aren’t perfect, but are hard-working, self-aware individuals who are constantly striving to improve those weaknesses, too.
Do you feel as though every new hire is “missing something”? Or do you have a high rate of turnover, but can’t figure out quite what the problem may be? If so, you might be suffering from the fruitless search for the perfect candidate. We have the solution. Instead of looking for perfection, try these three things instead:
Look for potential
As you try a fresh approach in your hiring search, consider following the notion “hire for attitude, not skill.” This might be a somewhat revolutionary idea if you’ve been stuck on a quest for perfection, but this approach suggests that the better candidates are those who show great potential. Instead of selecting the candidate with the incredible resume, consider a recent graduate who displays an outstanding attitude. Give a chance to the individual seeking a midlife career change, rather than the more “obvious” candidate with a set of ideal skills. Although this can occasionally be a somewhat risky move, and may not work for every role, it has proven true time and again across industries that hiring for attitude often generates exceptional employees who deliver amazing work—and stick around for years.
Reassess your workplace expectations
The savvy business owner knows that occasionally he or she must take a hard look at their own prevailing attitudes and habits and at their workplace as a whole. It’s healthy to assess what is working and what is not working and to constantly be looking for ways to improve. To find the best employees for your company, you might need to simply tweak your workplace expectations.
Perhaps you’re demanding perfection from your current employees. Are your expectations too high or unreasonable? Take stock of your current approaches from an objective standpoint, and reframe for greater flexibility. You never know how even minor changes could revolutionise your hiring patterns or even augment the productivity and engagement of your current staff!
Need some ideas for improving your employee experience? Check out this post on boosting employee morale, to ensure your team is happy and their wellbeing is supported.
Outsource to the pros
Finally, consider outsourcing your recruitment. This is a tried-and-true employment solution that can help to find you incredible candidates who check all your boxes. While we know here at On Line Recruitment and Labour Hire that perfection does not exist, we are extremely confident in our ability to make tremendous matches between employee and employer. If you’re having difficulties with your current hiring situation, give us a call. Let us show you how working with our team can make your employment approach easy, pleasant, and hassle-free.
