We all know that a business depends on its people. If you don’t have the best people working for you, your innovation, customer service and productivity can all take a hit, and this isn’t something that you want to happen, especially if you’re aiming to be in a period of high growth this year.

So how do you make sure that you’re hiring the best person for your business, and not risking your livelihood on people who may not be invested in ensuring that your business succeeds? We’ve all made the mistake of hiring someone we though was perfect, only to realise that they’re not perfect at all, and it’s a lot easier to hire someone than it is to fire them.

Here are some tips for hiring the best person for your business:

Get in touch early

The chance that the perfect person for your role will be suddenly out of a job just as you decide to advertise is rather slim. Your best bet is to know who you want to hire before you even need to hire a new staff member and ask them if they can see themselves working for you in the future. Once you begin to talk to someone, you can quickly learn about their level of job satisfaction and what it is that’s not quite making them happy in their current job. From here you can let them know that you would fix this problem, and have them lined up and ready to work for you whenever you need a new staff member.

Interview remotely

If you have a number of different applicants, it makes little sense to get them all to come in for a formal interview before you begin narrowing them down. Instead, arrange to have a conference with them via Skype or Google Hangouts, ask them a few questions and get a feel for their personality. You can quickly get an idea about whether they would be a good fit for your business, and if you like them you can invite them into your office for a formal interview.
This is a great way to save time, and also makes it easier for you, your HR team and the person being interviewed.

Do some testing

It’s all good and well to like a person and get on with them, but until you get an idea for their skill set, it’s impossible to know exactly how they would slot into your business. Testing these potential employees will allow you to get an idea of their strengths and weaknesses, and there is now software available like Revelian which incorporates fun games into the test so your potential employees won’t feel nervous and overwhelmed, but you can still get a good look at their abilities, personality type, strengths and weaknesses, and decide if they are the right person for the role and if they’ll work well with your current team members.