Thomas Jefferson once (famously) said, “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” March is a month where we talk much of luck, but often, this is just disguised as hard work. When hiring employees, a little time and hard work go a long way.
Conduct Reference and Background Checks When Hiring Employees
Checking references used to be the way to go in seeing if an applicant would be a good fit for your company. Now, it’s almost become a necessity for business owners to do a full background check before hiring employees.
The costs involved with doing an official background check and fingerprinting can be extremely prohibitive, especially if you’re a small business owner. There are many things you CAN do that involve a little hard work, but don’t cost anything. After doing these things, hopefully, you’ll end up looking very “lucky” with the caliber of employees you end up with.
Check Accuracy of Information
First, check and double-check the educational information listed on the application. Studies have shown 20 to 30 percent of all applications include exaggerated or falsified educational information. Checking this information can immediately rule out some applicants.
Contact Former Employers
Next, contact those former employers! Many employers fail to contact the former employers listed on an application. Doing this legwork can be critical in determining the real reasons why an employee left, and can also serve as a great tool to verify dates of employment.
Call All References
Finally, call those references. Require at least three non-family references and actually call them. Many employers require references, but never utilize them to find out about potential employees.
When Hiring Employees Conduct a Social Media Search
In addition to these formal methods of looking into applicants’ backgrounds, use social media as much as possible to research into who you really are hiring. Read more about why social media screenings are gaining popularity among employers when hiring employees.
Put forth this little bit of hard work and then sit back while others admire your fortunate good luck!
We at Ninja Gig realize the importance of hiring the best, honest, and most capable employees. We offer customizable employment applications that will help capture key data and information which will help you hire the best. With this, and all of our other great features, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and sign up today for a 14-day free trial and see how great, yet simple to use, our software is.