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Hiring Tips from Experts: Find and Retain the Best Talent

The hiring process is one of a small business’s most stressful and most important aspects. If you want to grow your business, you will need to recruit employees for small businesses to develop websites, bill clients via accounts payable, and hopefully, run your Human Resources department. However, hiring is a challenging business, as is finding the right candidate.

Mess it up and you risk infecting the company with lazy, apathetic, and unqualified persons. Here’s how to hire the right employee for your business. Studies have shown the major importance of hiring the right employee in terms of your bottom-line profit.

There are also tips for hiring and training managers and supervisors.

Get it right and the reward is a steady stream of productivity and innovation. That’s how you hire like a boss by using these hiring tips. Save time and money on employees, as well as remote employees, by outsourcing payroll processing to the professionals at Checkissuing.

The problem is that most small businesses don’t view hiring as the complex process it is. They believe strongly that they “know people” and “can snuff out talent.” This, of course, isn’t necessarily untrue, but it’s also a poor platform to base 100% of your process on. You need a plan. You need proven methods. You need to think outside the box. Make these hiring practices for the small business your best practice.

HR Experts Hiring Tips – How To Hire Good Employees For a Small Business

Don’t be afraid to take risks. The world of hiring will have a set of standards you are supposed to issue when seeking out new candidates: Must have a college degree, must have X years of experience, must live X miles from the company. Sometimes these items listed are for great reasons, but often, they limit your process by eliminating great talents. Would a college degree in English really help your company’s goals? Is the position you are looking to hire for a skill that could be learned? This is important because often, you can find smart and reliable people and train them up.

Then you have a smart, reliable, ______ worker (you fill in the blank). Some positions, such as marketing and accounting, may be trainable. You could also pay for online courses, which would be cheaper than hiring someone who eventually quits or you let go, and having to rehire, then you will have to use these hiring tips all over again.

Likeability actually does matter. The person doesn’t need to be the life of the party, but you should also get a sense that they work well with other people. If this person’s role will involve working with other teams, leading projects, or sharing tasks, you don’t want someone who is going to grind with everyone. It doesn’t matter. That said, talent and experience are also important. It is a balancing act, to say the least, in selecting the right candidate for the job.

Know what you want, know who you are. This is great advice. Often, companies don’t look inward to decide who they are and who they are looking for, instead opting for a shotgun approach in interviewing candidates. Are you an energetic company that does retreats and allows skateboards in the office? It is something to consider when interviewing people. What’s your company’s goal for employees? What’s your mantra? Knowing these things and being able to articulate them intelligently during an interview process can really help you find a good fit.

Hiring isn’t easy, and it shouldn’t be thought of as such. It’s an integral part of most small businesses. Conduct research and utilize these small business hiring tips to reap the rewards.

At Check Issuing, we are the check-writing service provider for numerous small businesses. Through our communications with them, we know that a major stress point is hiring competent employees.

In recent years, a rash of new “hiring companies” has emerged because they’ve identified a huge gap that needs to be filled. Hiring is difficult. Hiring can suck – use these hiring tips to make it easier.

But what if we could follow a few simple steps to make the hiring process smoother and more productive? Well, we certainly can. Below are some tips directly from the businesses we work with on a daily basis. They provide valuable insights into how the hiring process can be a smoother ride with their hiring tips.

Proven hiring tips from industry experts.

More Hiring Tips from Recruiters

Resumes are Mostly Garbage: Yep, I said it, and as stunning as it may sound, the truth is, resumes are just hype. I mean, by all intention, resumes are something the job candidate puts together as a way to show their highlight reel. They can exaggerate (who wouldn’t?); they can lie (I wouldn’t, but people do it); they can omit information you might want to know.

What you want to do is focus on a candidate’s ability to problem solve. Focus on their accomplishments and the process they used to achieve them. Stop getting caught up in “you were here from this year to this year, and you made this annual salary.” You need team players and problem solvers to help take your small business to the next level.

Pay Better For fewer People: If you want the best, you are going to have to pay for it (sort of). Paying fewer individuals who are better qualified could lower your overall salary expenditure. The benefits in production could make for an even bigger win. So often, we price ourselves below the talent that we want rather than trimming the fat we don’t need. Free up space and get the candidates you want. Offer incentive packages based on production. Share the wealth. The better your team, the better your product and the service will inherently become.

Don’t Fear Remote: I know, you want to be able to see that your employees show up daily. You want to call impromptu meetings. So, what’s the problem? Remote employees aren’t much different than on-site employees. With all the communication software available, such as Skype, Google Hangouts, and even Facebook, you should have no issue keeping up with who is on your team. Additionally, it reduces costs for the company.

Hiring may never be simple, but you can hire like a pro if you follow a few straightforward steps. Change your perception just a little, and great things can happen!

The ability to hire great people is, without question, a skill that can set your business apart from the competition. Google, Facebook, and Amazon are all known for hiring exceptional talent. One aspect of hiring great people is certainly paying a competitive salary, but it isn’t everything. Google has a comprehensive campus of activities for employees to enjoy, offering a range of social benefits. Your company might not have a basketball court and sauna, but you can pick off some of Google’s ideas for your own.

One of the most underestimated aspects of the hiring process is conducting interviews with candidates. Being great at the interviewing process, which extends beyond just sitting down with candidates, can save you time and increase your company’s profitability. Oddly, many companies do everything well but the interview. Often, companies simply decide on a competitive pay rate and allow a manager to conduct interviews without a clear plan. But a plan is most certainly needed.

So, how does one set themselves apart in the interview process?

The first thing you should do as the interviewer is to remove the pressure. Not everyone is great at interviewing; many people are incredibly nervous, but this really is no indication about whether or not they will make a great developer or accountant for your company. We have found that to be true in our hiring for payroll processing companies.

Try breaking the ice, asking them easy questions about their kids or even their listed hobbies. You want to attempt to relate to them and put them at ease.

Sell the position. Often, as hiring managers, we forget that part of our job is to effectively sell the position. Today’s economy can sometimes cause us to forget that we don’t have all the leverage. Sure, lots of people need jobs, but on the same token, we also need good people who want to work for us. Good, intelligent, qualified people can take a company to the next level. If they don’t like an interview and have another offer on the table, our company might be out even if we offer a bit more pay.

Don’t skip the reference checks. I understand that most people qualify their references and that former employees aren’t supposed to say anything bad, but that doesn’t mean we should skip the checking process. One way to overcome this is to call the reference and ask them to give you their “personal opinions, which will not represent their company.” Once this is understood, the reference can speak more candidly. You can ask them about specific challenges or reliability. You should also call all the listed references.

Having a plan is the essence of the interview process. Often, we fall victim to the “let’s just sit down and have a conversation, and my gut will tell me everything I need to know” syndrome. Your gut has its place, but it should be acting on instincts interpreted from a well-planned strategy.

Resources

https://talentclick.com/resources/9-benefits-hiring-right-candidate-first-time-around/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanhall/2012/06/19/the-7-cs-how-to-find-and-hire-great-employees/
https://squareup.com/us/en/the-bottom-line/growing-your-team/basic-labor-laws-how-to-hire-employees-correctly

Last updated: October 2025

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