Hire the best person – that’s a tall order, but a key one for a small business owner’s success. A poor hiring decision will impact your bottom line. You will waste time and money upfront, and later you’ll spend time fixing trouble. And, let’s face it, employee problems are painful to solve.

A bad hire affects your company morale, your reputation, and even your customer service. There are many steps you can take to help you select the best candidate. The most common ones are resume screening, interviewing, testing and reference checking.

To succeed in a job, a candidate must have knowledge, skills, and attitude. From resume screening, you can decide if a candidate has the necessary knowledge and ability to do the job. During the interview, you can determine if s/he actually has the skills and knowledge you need.

Brittney Helmrich focuses on hiring strategies in her article “8 Tips for Hiring the Right Person for the Job”. Her suggestions are useful when you’re ready to interview candidates.

8 Tips for Hiring the Right Person for the Job

No matter what kind of business you run, it’s important that you have quality employees to help your company run and grow. To hire the right person for the job, you need to look past candidates’ resumes and cover letters and learn more about them as people. Employees need to have the skills and experience required to do the job, but they also need to fit in with the company culture and be willing to take direction and handle challenges as they come. Read the rest of the post…

Don’t neglect to conduct reference checks before you make a job offer. Check at least two business references on each finalist. Research shows that roughly 33% of job applicants embellish their employment history. The goal of reference checking is to confirm the information you have received. It’s also one more way to make sure that s/he has the knowledge, skills and attitude that have said they have.