Learning and training never end

Raising children gives one many opportunities to teach. After all, isn’t that one of the primary jobs of a parent? Following years raising children, I realized that I had learned as much, if not more than I had taught. I often joke with my adult children that I never wanted to learn so much or develop such character as I have in my parental role of raising them. I’ve found that hiring and training employees isn’t much different. They continue to teach me new things all the time.

As long as you are responsible for employees, hiring and training is part of the job. Certainly, as a small business owner that is true. So how do you hire and train employees for success?

You can find a lot written about how to hire. Some HR professionals are great at finding the “right” candidate every time, while others hire people with excellent skills only to have them fail. I was surprised when it finally sunk in that hiring highly skilled and experienced people was easier for me than hiring inexperienced people who had little to no skills. Running a small business, I am more often hiring the inexperienced and training them.

It took hiring for the same entry level position three times within the same year before I learned what to look for in a candidate. Most who applied had little to no experience. How was I to tell if they would be good at this job and if it would be fulfilling for them?

I looked at what past successful employees had in common. Plays an instrument. Likes working on their own. Has a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. How does that relate to the job? This position requires simple math to keep inventory accurate. Almost everyone that plays an instrument is good at math. People who enjoy individual activities rather than group activities tend to do well working on their own. Desire to complete a puzzle, a book, a project typically means that person enjoys a sense of accomplishment and they will work towards completion of the task.

After hiring comes training. The entry level position I needed to fill required some basic judgement and decision making. Of course, step by step procedures were provided. However, it cannot be assumed that everyone has the necessary life experience to make appropriate judgements and decisions, meaning this also needed to be taught. We do this by asking the employee how they would solve certain problems. What decision would they make about a situation? How would they determine the next steps in certain situations?

This approach allows the employee to learn how to handle typical situations of the job, but also helps build their critical thinking capacity, their confidence and to take ownership and pride in the job they are doing.

It took me many years to learn from my employees and co-workers what works best when hiring and training. I look forward to training new employees, especially for the entry level jobs because I always learn something new.