Every business wants to hire great employees and create impactful teams. At its very core, this sounds like a simple task, but there are many factors that make finding the perfect team a difficult goal to reach. Inefficient teams can waste company time and resources, affecting growth and profits in the long run. In order to avoid making substantial hiring mistakes, we have compiled a list of tips and tricks for creating a rock star team. 

Focus On the Team, Not the Individual

One of the biggest mistakes when hiring new employees is to focus on the individual hire rather than the team they will join. A team is a delicate ecosystem that needs all of the right personalities to flourish and thrive. Too many leaders can result in disagreements, but the exact opposite can create indecision. Ideally, teams should be able to work together in order to perform their duties without losing time and resources to constant disagreements. However, teams who agree on everything run the risk of suffering from groupthink, where the desire for harmony leads to suboptimal decision making. The balance is an important factor to consider when hiring new team members.

It is also important to understand a team’s purpose. In order to make a team stronger than the sum of its parts, team members must have complementary skill sets that can drive productivity to a higher level. For example, a marketing team with members who understand metrics and data may need a new member who understands consumer psychology; a skilled data analyst may have impressive qualities but will not help the team grow as a whole. It’s important to determine which skills are necessary to round out other team members rather than hiring exceptional individuals. Just as sports teams need members who excel at offense and defense, a business team needs members for specific roles to be effective.

Look Internally

One of the best ways to find the right employees for a team is to look internally. This can mean asking existing employees for referrals or considering the existing employees themselves. As a general rule, smart people often know other smart people. If an employee is good enough to work at a company, the chances are that they know others who would excel at that company as well. By leveraging your successful team members to identify workers with similar habits, you can ensure consistency when it comes to values and expertise.

Moreover, bringing on employees who already work at a firm guarantees a great cultural fit. You can even save some onboarding and orientation costs by doing this, but be careful with hiring too many internal team members. While it is true that an internal hire will be easier to integrate into a team a fresh set of eyes can still provide benefits when it comes to solving problems.

Quality Over Quantity

While online posts to job boards will bring in a large number of applicants, quantity does not necessarily mean quality. Candidates will often apply to many positions at a time on these channels, and the chances of landing an interview with someone who isn’t truly interested in the team are fairly high with this method. Instead, cast a smaller net and try to recruit individuals who are truly interested in your team. While referrals are great for this, networking and attending industry events are other ways to guarantee targeted recruiting practices. Personalize all interactions and make sure your candidates do the same, and you will have a pool of applicants genuinely interested in helping a team succeed.

Identify a Candidate’s Passion and Potential

When hiring a new team member, identifying a candidate’s passion can help you predict future success within a role. You can always teach skills, but passion runs deeper. A candidate’s willingness to work hard and sacrifice for a cause can forecast future growth and accomplishment at a company. Passionate employees also tend to be loyal while knowledge-rich candidates with no passion can become bored easily. It’s always worth exploring a candidate’s potential because the ability to learn and adapt can be more important than hard skills. Successful team members are fluid and open-minded when it comes to working with others and learning new topics. Hiring team members with rigid work styles can be a pitfall you’d want to avoid.

Get Input From the Rest of the Team

One of the last steps before hiring a new team member should be introducing them to the actual team. After all, they will be working with these team members on a day-to-day basis, so they should be compatible. It’s best to do a group interview with the rest of the team before you’ve made up your mind on a candidate. This way, the team can provide valuable insight into points you may have missed during your evaluation. The team can determine whether the candidate will fit in with their culture, which can greatly impact productivity. They can also resolve any potential issues between team members and the potential hire during this period as well.

Want More Tips?

If you’d like more tips on how to build a rock star business team, contact us today. We’d be happy to evaluate your current needs and provide a recommendation for your business. At Ntegro, we find solutions for our clients, so reach out to us online for a free consultation.

Do you have any other tips you’d like to share? Any stories about hiring practices that surprised you? Comment below to share!