Who Works for You Matters: How to Staff These 3 Departments Effectively

 

People Talking in Cafe– stock image

Building the right staff can be the difference between a company being a long-term success and a company fizzling out in a few years. The trick is having to replace people who were once valuable when they leave for other opportunities or are looking for a career change. Retaining employees that are profitable is important as it can cost a company thousands of dollars to train a new employee without the guarantee that this employee will end up working out.

Taking a proactive approach to hiring is important as gut feelings can be very wrong as far as the hiring department goes. There is going to need to be a multiple step interview process but try to make this within a week or two. Extending periods of hiring for months can have a company lose some of its best candidates simply because they could not wait any longer to accept a position. The interview should include some kind of practical assignment that can help assess the quality of work that the applicant will offer once hired. Turning these things it can give you a great idea of how a person works as well and whether they need constant direction or can be given directions once and produce what is needed.

Every department differs in the qualities that they are looking for in an employee. A creative department might want a free-spirited person instead of a pushy sales type managing. The following are departments and qualities that you need to look for in applicants that will help you staff your company to the best of your ability.

Sales

Sales is a grind so hiring people who are used to a grind day in and day out is important. College athletes are used to grinding out practices, coursework, and social lives so they are prime candidates. Couple this with the competitive nature of many athletes and you could have a department thriving by motivating one another. Having someone on the sales team that can take clients out to have a good time is important in many industries. Contracts often times are worked out over drinks or at dinner so a person who is not only a great seller but also likable needs to be part of the team.

Having a person that closes sale after sale is obviously something that you want. This will allow the company to give this person the “hot” leads so they can close the sale. Keeping these types of salespeople around is going to take a lot of work as other companies can always use someone with a proven track record. Most sales are done via email, the phone, and rarely in person with technology coming so far. Allowing a top sales person to work from home can be enough to retain them as this is the best perk a job can give in the eyes of many professionals.

Marketing

The marketing department needs quite a few different types of personalities to succeed. There is going to have to be the person that studies the analytics and ROI for campaigns. This person could have a mathematical background but also needs to understand things like website traffic, organic searches, and other SEO related metrics. In the interview, it can be a great test to ask how to shape a marketing campaign when given certain metrics and the ROI on each tactic. Good knowledge of marketing is needed along with the analytical mind that allows a person to translate data into an actionable plan.

The content creation portion of this department is going to need the creatives as well as a master motivator.  Creatives can have their morale go down if they do not find their work fulfilling enough. Fostering a team atmosphere is important as sometimes creating content for a campaign will seem redundant. Obviously, the designers and writers should only be hired after a piece of work is shown as an example. Assigning them an article of the small page to design will allow you to see if they had help from other parties in the examples they have given.

Data is a huge part of marketing so finding data miners as well as those that can find emails of publishes or influencers is important. Hiring these people in-house can be expensive so the marketing team should build out a team of reliable freelancers. This can save money as well as give a company the ability to hire a freelancer full-time if they are valuable enough. This would require getting some kind of green card if you want this person to work in-house but this will not require immigration papers if the person is going to work remotely.

HR

The HR department needs to be hired carefully as putting a person that is friends with an executive can lead a company to ruins. Overlooking or turning a blind eye to offenses can lead to a lawsuit for discrimination or wrongful termination. The HR employees need to be trustworthy as well as detail-oriented there are wrong ways and correct ways to write someone up, fire a person, and give them a verbal warning. There are trainings and certifications that can be acquired and done that make these professionals that much better. When interviewing these applicants ask about the company culture at a previous place of employment. People who are going to try to look to get employees into trouble should be avoided as you do not want star employees terminated. With this being said you want a person that will take action against anyone but does not go looking to ruin other’s days.

Hiring at first is going to have certain growing pains until you find what works best for you company. Once you have nailed down the interview process, questions, and where you are finding your talent you will start to see a big difference. The company is only as good as the employees that work there, remember that!

People Talking in Cafe– stock image

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