Why You Need To Hire Qualified Professionals For Your Business
So your business is looking to hire a new employee, but what should you focus on qualifications or experience?
That question is something that has plagued business leaders and hiring managers for probably as long as their business has been going, and the answer isn’t easy.
A Wider Range Of Qualifications:
In today’s world, it is easier than ever for graduates who are leaving school to go on to a degree course and learn all of the theoretical skills that a business would need, but it may appear that sometimes these students don’t have the necessary practical skills to make them a good fit a top-level business, but is this really the truth?
Degree programs these days can be very in-depth, and many students choose to split their time between working on their degree course and working in a real-world situation. This gives them a unique insight into what it is like to work for a larger organization as well as the more technical skills and intricacies that only a degree course can provide.
For example, a graduate who has a Masters In Business Administration is more likely to have a wider range of skills and experience gained on their degree program than an employee who has worked the same job for the last five years in the same company.
MBAs usually have different concentration options for students who want to focus on different areas, but they also have the ability to grow their skillset by working with students from different disciplines. Do you want to find out more about how an MBS program splits its concentrations? Find out more in this article.
What Kind Of Person Do You Need To Hire?
When it comes to hiring a new member of your team, there are six key areas that you should be looking for in every candidate and in every interview.
They Have The Knowledge:
Candidates who have knowledge of the specific job that you are hiring for are like gold dust to most companies; however, it’s all too easy to focus on pure knowledge and not experience.
This is where some degree students can fail because they have the knowledge but not necessarily the experience to back that knowledge up.
This doesn’t mean, however, that hiring someone who has lots of experience in the type of role you are looking for is always a better bet.
Experienced gained on the job is usually only focused on the task at hand, which can lead some older and more experienced employees to be left behind in the knowledge department if they have stuck rigidly to one industry only.
Having a knowledge base that is more generic will be more helpful in some industries, especially those that focus more on innovation and are more inclined to try new ideas.
Better Skills:
Following right on from knowledge, you need to be looking for your next employee to have the skills to do well in the role, or at least the right skills to begin to do the job.
Where many companies fail is in their expectations for their new employees to just jump straight in and do the work as it has always been done. This causes problems because the new employee is unlikely to do things exactly the same way as your previous employee did, and, for businesses that are focused on the future rather than the past, doing things the same way you’ve always done them is not always the most useful anyway.
Innovation in business does not happen when employees are all acting exactly the same way as robot clones.
Businesses that want to innovate, and want to improve, will do well to look for employees who have most of the skills and who also have an additional diverse range of skills in other areas that may not necessarily be on the job description.
Having The Right Experience:
This need for variety in job applicants is also true when looking for experience and experienced hires.
Most companies would love to have a new employee joining their team who had years of experience in exactly the same industry and a proven track record in that industry, but, in truth, this is usually not possible. Even if it was possible, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the person who is the most experience at the job is actually the best hire for you.
It’s often said in business that you need a lot of experience as well as a lot of luck to succeed, so it is worth looking for employees that have an interesting range of experience rather than a specific range of experience. These employees are more likely to bring something new to your business and to your company.
More Theoretical:
One of the biggest bonuses to hiring graduates from business courses is that they are generally more practically minded than people who may have been in business, and in your specific industry, for many years.
While learning on the job is very useful, and certainly, something that should be appreciated, when doing your candidate shortlisting, it’s worth considering that recent graduates will have been trained in more modern techniques. They may have a greater understanding of how small changes in areas you may not have considered could make a big difference to your business.
This innovative thinking is definitely something that could affect your bottom line. It is, however, your decision as to whether that may be a good thing or a bad thing; this is a very personal choice for all hiring managers to consider.
The Passion Is There:
Passionate employees are very hard to come by, and, unfortunately, it may be that people who have been in your industry for a long time have lost the passion for the work that they are doing.
As life takes its toll on people and people have more stresses to worry about in their private lives, working life can sometimes take a back seat. This can be reflected in their work and in their attitude to their work.
That’s not to say that all employees will be underperforming after a few years in the job, and many employees continue to love the job that they do and the work they do for many decades, even choosing to stay on past retirement age. This is, however, a rare find, and if this is a member of your team, you should do your best to keep hold of them because they are an asset!
When you are interviewing a candidate who has taken a specific degree in business, you can be sure that they have taken that degree because it is something they are passionate about and it’s something that they are hoping to make a long and happy career with.
Passion for one’s work is a difficult thing to find; it should be cherished no matter who the employee is or where you found them.
More Efficiency:
Hiring qualified individuals can make a really big difference to the efficiency of your business.
People who have learned a specific way of doing something may or may not be doing it in the most efficient way.
When students learn on a business course such as an MBA, they learn to be more efficient in their ways of working, which can make a big difference to the company they are going to be working for.
It is a well-known fact that in the world of business, time is money, and if you can find a new hire who can work efficiently and do the same job as the person they are replacing, but in less time, the benefits are clear for all to see.
In Summary:
Hiring the right people in any business is an important step to building a high-performance and reliable team. What the “right person” looks like will be different depending on the industry and even depending on the internal team structure they will be joining.
It’s not enough just to hire the person who matches your possibly arbitrary job description, but if you want your new hire to succeed in their role, it is more important now than ever that you should hire the person who is both right for the job and right for your company.
The bottom line is that if you are interviewing somebody and they just don’t seem like a good fit for your team, then they probably aren’t -despite all of their qualifications and experience.
Hiring decisions should be made on a person-to-person basis after shortlisting. It’s not enough to just hire someone on paper, you need to look at hiring the whole person, and that may mean hiring somebody with less experience than would be preferable. Hiring managers would be better placed, in most cases, to hire somebody who is more passionate about the job that they are going into.
Remember that skills can be trained and experience can be gained, but passion is one of the things that can never be faked. It is one of the most vital components for a happy and harmonious working life.
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