Sales Trainer - Five Ways to Attract Superstar Employees

This month our blog topics have focused on team development and how to turn your employees into superstars! In today’s blog, I will share five ways to attract great candidates.

1. Always keep an eye out for possible employees and try not to hire when you’re desperate to find someone, anyone. When you’re desperate, you don’t tend to make the best choices and you could end up with someone you’d pay to get rid of. (Consider this point for multiple aspects of life!)

2. Evaluate who you have now – even if you’re a one man band, do the evaluation to determine what the strengths and weaknesses of your business are because you’ll want to add a candidate who brings talents that you don’t currently have. The biggest mistake we make is hiring people that are like ourselves. You would be surprised at how many companies have employees with the same personality type of the person who did the hiring! We teach a course called “Connecting with Different Personality Types” – it’s awesome! In the course, you can learn to get along with any personality type within 30 seconds!

When we teach this course, we divide the room into the different personality types and find that the majority of personalities are the same – people hire people who are like themselves! This means that the company is lacking skills that other personality types would bring. Variety is the spice of life, so take a good look at where the holes are in your company and try to fill them.

3. To attract great candidates, consider your company’s reputation. How your business looks, runs and feels to an outsider is important when they are considering if they want to join forces. Are you state-of-the-art or is there clutter and a general feeling of chaos within the office? If the office resembles a toxic waste site and you’re a spa, it may be time for a makeover!

4. Prepare your commercial. When you interview, post an ad or are on the lookout, make sure you have a good news story to tell. In other words, design a commercial that introduces your company in the best possible light. Look at career postings as a template for examples of great wording.

5. Go for a test drive. Bring someone in for a temporary project or hire a temporary staffing service to see how the person works before you hire them full time. After all, an employee is someone that can make or break your business – hire slow, fire fast. You wouldn’t marry the first date you go on (well, most wouldn’t!). Check things out for a while and see how your new temporary employee handles the job. It may be divorce court or possibly a match made in heaven – you’ll soon find out!