Hiring Boost

One of this morning’s headlines…

US Companies to Hire More Employees Next Year

They should have added… and it’s not going to be easy. This was not just a recession for most employers. This was a re-set. When times got tough they realized they had carried way too many employees that were not a “good match” for their company. These employees then found themselves unemployed.

I think that the 10% unemployment number will be around for a while. Business owners with less than 300 employees are going to be very selective in their hiring and not make the same “quantity over quality” mistake of past hiring.

So now with the unemployment rate hovering at 10%, you run an ad in the paper and 200 resumes appear. At a 3% rate, you may only have gotten 10 resumes.

You tell me which is easier. Screening 10 resumes or 200?

(Note: if the newspaper is your number one source for applicants, you might want to get into this millennium and check out various resources on the Internet. To avoid the label “old timer” all together you should know Dunder Mifflin, Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report-don’t pronounce the “t’s”)

Bottom Line:

There will be some great people available for hire in 2010. The trick is how to sort through the crowd to find them. First, determine a model employee for this job. Make sure you benchmark both performance and especially behavior characteristics. Then ask situational questions to go after these characteristics…”Describe a situation when….”