Recruiting new employees is a challenging task. From testing their skills, running background checks, to analyzing how well they will fit with the existing team, the process can cost both money and time.
However, recruiting essential workers can be even more difficult. Since they can have a greater responsibility than others, hiring essential workers requires more time and effort. It can also be very disappointing if these efforts don’t yield long-lasting results.
Therefore, as an employer, you must pay extra attention when hiring essential workers. Below are some tips that can help in this regard:
Prioritize Personality Over Skills
Regarding essential workers, their personality and attitude at work can be more impactful than their skills. Prioritizing responsibility and organization over years of experience or education can be highly beneficial for employers. Responsibility and organization skills can never be forced on any employee. But employers can quickly provide on-the-job training if the essential workers lack experience or industry knowledge.
Offer Fair Pay and Practical Employee Benefits
Most employers who took their employees for granted learned their lesson the hard way during the evolving employment landscape. As an employer hiring essential workers, you must acknowledge the important role they play for your business.
The world is experiencing a shortage of essential workers. Therefore, the competition is not among the candidates but the employers. An attractive pay and useful employee benefits will allow you to hire employees quicker, retain them for longer, and keep them motivated throughout their service. On the other hand, if you don’t offer your employees fair pay, they won’t have any trouble finding an employer who will.
Shortlist Important Skills
While we recommend prioritizing personality over skills, it doesn’t mean that you don’t judge candidates on their skills at all. The most practical way to navigate this situation is to narrow down the skills that shouldn’t be ignored when hiring essential workers.
Creating a list of skills that are not as important or those that can be taught on the job can also significantly help narrow down candidate profiles and simplify hiring essential workers.
Schedule a Paid Trial
Recruitment is costly. According to one news source, hiring a new employee can cost organizations $4000. This cost can easily increase twice if you don’t hire the right candidate the first time. However, by increasing the recruitment cost to another few hundred dollars, you can ensure that your organization hires the right candidate every time.
This can be easily achieved through scheduling paid trials for shortlisted candidates. If a candidate already has a full-time job, limit the trial to 2-3 hours to allow them to fit it into their routine. Observe and analyze the candidates’ performance during the trial to finalize the perfect candidate. Pay the candidates right as they finish their trial shift to avoid any legal issues.
Last but not least, stay patient when hiring essential employees. Hiring the wrong candidate in a hurry will only cost you more money and effort.
