A warm welcome to our blog! Today we wished to explore the key qualities that a top candidate you may hire would possess. We believe aside from qualifications and experience, it is important to look for certain attributes in the candidate you hire that will make that person a valuable and long term employee. You can usually train skills but it is very difficult to change character.
A study showed that 46% of newly-hired employees make it past an 18 month mark. Furthermore, technical skills account for only 11% of hiring failures and 89% of hiring failures are actually due to attitudes. This shows us that focusing on the pure technical skill of candidates will help neither the employer nor the employee long term. So let us see what qualities you want to look for in a new hire.
Communication and teamwork
It is very important that a candidate has good communication skills to successfully undertake the job and provide a flow of information that supports the work flow. Good communication skills means that your employee can not only write and verbalise what they mean to say, it also means they can listen and understand what is being communicated.
Additionally, it is a key skill to be able to communicate and work well with teammates in order to achieve the company’s goals and milestones. Teamwork involves listening, compromising and formulating solutions together to find ways how each person can successfully deliver on their tasks.
Problem solving and self motivation
Another key quality of a great candidate is their problem solving ability and the self motivation to do so. There are many challenges that will come up during work that are not alway in the job description or within your employees education and experience. This is where the ideal candidate with problem solving skills would shine. The person would find ways to overcome the challenge by communicating and putting together different skills to solve the issue.
Managers of SMEs require employees who can handle the task while they attend to the many other aspects of the business. A candidate who is self motivated will not need micromanagement. After you hire that person you can be confident they will attend to the tasks without needing an extra push. This employee will be able to identify problems and have the drive to propose and implement solutions. These characters will ensure your business is in capable hands despite the different challenges it may be faced with.
Creativity and flexibility
In addition to problem solving, the ability to do so creatively makes a candidate unique. Applying creativity means your employee is passionate about the work and can go out of the box to provide new ideas. If you hire a candidate who is creative, you will get the advantage of new insight and ways of working that can help your business become more effective and unique.
You also need an employee who is flexible and gives room for dealing with different circumstances as they occur. Things do not always go on schedule, meetings are reshuffled, pandemic may make remote work mandatory, business strategies may need to be shifted, clients may require a change in deliverables. As these changes occur in your business, an employee who is flexible and quick to adapt would help you stay steady and continue to deliver.
Dependability and high work ethic
Businesses rely on consistency and integrity from their employees in order to function and succeed. No matter how good the technical skills of your employee, if they are unable to deliver consistently, they will negatively impact your business. This is why you need to identify the candidate who can be committed and to whom you can safely entrust your business requirements.
If you hire an employee with a high work ethic, they will communicate honestly, make sure work is done on time and with excellent quality. If you hire an employee who is not dependable or does not have a good work ethic, then they will likely fail at delivering and not provide value to your business. So it is important to identify these traits in the candidates you wish to hire.
Eagerness to learn and a positive attitude
In today’s constantly changing landscape, new skills are required frequently. One example is that the pandemic is reshaping how things are done. That means your business needs workers who have digital skills and can work remotely.
An employee with a positive attitude will easily work with management and teammates. They will also be able to deal well with setbacks and handle positive criticism well. As the common saying goes “hire character not skill”, if you hire a candidate who is eager to learn and has a positive attitude then you can practically teach them any skills they may lack or need to add.
Join us to find your top candidate
While most hiring processes simply focus on qualification and technical skills, we at AJ Connect make sure we select candidates for your business who are both talented for the job and possess the key qualities mentioned in this article to ensure they become valuable long term employees. We have a top-notch hiring process with experts in different specialisms who can identify talent, skill and the winning characteristics to help move your businesses forward.
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