I recently responded to a blogger about hiring good people. Here’s a summary of our conversation:
* Pay for a local salary survey to make sure your salary is competitive in your marketplace for similar jobs in similar industries. Adjust your pay scale accordingly.
* Consider creating a referral award program for your staff. They know what it takes to succeed and who would make good employees like them. Make it worth their while.
* Also pay a staffing consultant to help you create an application evaluation matrix to objectively assess each application quickly. Focus on the ‘soft’ qualities like integrity, attitude, enthusiasm and pride since you can easily fill any skill gaps with training.
* Make sure your performance management system includes realistic and comprehensive written performance objectives and written metric-driven evaluations based on those objectives.
With staffing, you do get what you pay for, so pay for what you want and need.