Cover Story Hiring Practices By: Teresa Ward Have Come A Long Way Gone are the days of simply hiring anyone with a pulse. A Teresa Ward, president of Teresa’s Family Cleaning and New York State’s Small Business Entrepreneur of the Year, is often considered Long Island’s fore-most authority on cleaning homes and businesses to create a cleaner and healthier environ-ment for all. Our highly sought after, award-winning weekly newsletter provides timely cleaning tips and other impor-tant Long Island information and charitable events for home-owners, businesses and not-for-profits. Visit us at www.TeresasFamilyCleaning.com to sign up and receive your copy today! for more info Visit www.cmmonline.com and type in search keyword: Management . For more information on related products, visit www.cmmonline.com , select SUPPLIER SEARCH from the main navigation bar, and enter keyword: Employees . All too often, the hiring of employees for a compa-ny is a practice that is done carelessly out of con-venience. Many times, people are enlisted quickly to ensure that there are enough hands to perform the jobs and/or services. Much time is spent training these people; it should be the other way around. More care should be taken on whom we hire more than the training of the wrong individual, as improper selection has many downfalls. Repercussions of a neglectful hiring methodol-ogy range from inferior quality of work to high turnover rates. No company wants customer dissatisfaction resulting from poor workmanship and low produc-tivity — and nobody wants the results of employ-ee turnover, which will most certainly include lost time, aggravation and increased hiring costs like advertising and training. Yet, many managers have either not thought about new hiring techniques or just feel they do not have the time to seek them out. If, however, they made the investment of time and a little expense, hiring managers would see that their company just might benefit from a bet-ter quality employee all around. There are different methods an employer may use as a better means of hiring employees. There is, of course, changing the interview. The interview is usually the most common way of screening applicants. The types of interviews vary greatly and a man-ager may consider changing the types of ques-tions asked or adding some to include thoughts about behavior, attitude and knowledge instead of general nice to meet you, where do you live, how did you hear about us questions. Positive results are more readily reached by asking the “right” questions in a set, structured way. Unstructured interviews are often ineffective. Interviewing may be a useful tool in finding a person who seems pleasant enough and may be able to do the job, but interviewing alone will not reveal if that person will stay with your company. There are many reasons why an employee leaves a job. A good hiring manager must be able to deter-mine what will make a person stay at the job and be productive, and then apply that knowledge into their hiring method. Learning a person’s characteristics is usually the key in deciding if that particular applicant will stay for the long haul or walk out the door in a couple of weeks. So, instead of just an interview, a good idea is to test the prospective hire. This Is (Not) A Test An intelligence test usually measures aptitude, verbal ability and reasoning skills. This type of test is fine for hiring teachers or nurses and those that must have mental capabil-14 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • July 2010
CMM – Archives July 2010: 14
