April 5, 2023
How do you write a good job description? What criteria should you use to choose a candidate? Can you DIY your hiring or is it better to work with a recruiter? These are just a few of the hiring questions I hear all the time from my clients.
And I get it — hiring is complicated. And it’s especially complex when you care about things like compliance, inclusivity, and diversity. So what’s the key to hiring well?
To answer that, I went to the best expert I know: Meg McCoy (formerly Baker) of Meg K & Co.! Meg is the reason I have my amazing team members here at Paradigm, and she’s helped countless other online business owners find and hire the right people.
Meg and I talked about her history and our experience working together. We also covered lots of crucial hiring topics:
- Setting up new team members for success: The best employee is only as good as the expectations and training you provide for them, so take a hard look at your hiring and onboarding processes.
- Making hiring more inclusive (for real): If you really want to do things differently than the corporate world, you need to be intentional about inclusivity and willing to look outside your comfort zone of people who are similar to you.
- Managing your expectations: Hiring doesn’t mean posting a generic job ad and choosing someone with the shiniest resume. You’ve got to put in the time and effort to find and hire the person who truly fits the role.
- Analyzing your criteria: Before you even post your job description, you need to be crystal clear on your criteria and know exactly what would make an employee a good fit for your team.
- Prioritizing diversity: There are countless benefits to hiring diversely, but how do you actually do that without just being performative? It starts from the very beginning and requires a serious commitment to due diligence.
- Deciding when to DIY your hiring: Sometimes it makes more sense to go it alone than work with a recruiter, especially if you’re just looking for a few contractors to take some tasks off your plate.
- Choosing the right candidate: It’s not about “getting a good feeling” or “being wowed” — you need to choose your next employee based on concrete criteria and clearly defined expectations.
- Creating fair, effective hiring practices: Making potential employees jump through hoops to prove that they want the job isn’t cool — and it’s not an effective way to find out which candidates are right for the job.
- Checking your privilege: Popular hiring “shortcuts” like personality tests and “find the secret word in the job ad” aren’t really going to find you the best candidate. But they will prioritize candidates with more privilege — and that’s not great.
Hiring is a complex process, and there’s a lot of bad advice and entrenched biases out there. But if you approach it with a commitment to be honest and open, you can find employees who will support you and help you build the kind of culture you want in your business.
Want your next hiring campaign to be the best one yet? Meg and I are relaunching our Hiring VIP Day, which is our completely done-for-you hiring and HR service. All you have to do is spend a few hours talking with us. I’ll create your entire HR strategy, your employee handbook, and performance management documents, and then Meg will get out there and find the perfect candidates for you.
If you’ve got questions about hiring, tag @theparadigmm or send me a DM on Instagram! And don’t forget to review and share this episode with any small business owners you know.
Listen Now!
Links mentioned:
Hiring VIP Day: https://the-paradigm.com/hiringvipday
Find Meg on her Website and Instagram
