Recruiting is one of the most critical things that employers undertake – the cost of a poor or inappropriate hire can be devastating to a small business, and cause long-term problems in the largest of companies.
So – what should we look for to ensure that we get the right person for the right job?

• Life-long learners: we need recruits who have good common sense and commercial nous
• Investors in your company: we need recruits who REALLY want to work for your company, who are prepared to invest their time and energy and their career in ensuring the success of your company, and they have a good work ethic to achieve this
• Optimistic: we need optimistic, enthusiastic individuals, who will motivate others around them
• Think like the owner/CEO: If a new recruit thinks like you and agrees with you, then there is a natural synergy that will greatly enhance engagement and focus on driving the business
• Belonging: new recruits need to ‘fit’ – Steve Jobs stated that “Apple is an Ellis Island kind of company built on the refugees from other companies. These are extremely bright individual contributors who were troublemakers at other companies”.
  We are not suggesting you hire troublemakers, but hire individuals who ‘fit’ into your vision and your team, even if they don’t fit the ‘normal’ job description completely.
• The right job: Understand completely what the job is, the content, and how the role fits in with your company strategy – most poor hires happen when the job description is ill-defined or incomplete.

As Jim Collins wrote in his book ‘Good to Great’ – ‘In the good-to-great transformation, people are not your most important asset – the RIGHT people are!’