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Recruitment advice for employers
The decision to take on an employee requires a delicate balancing act.
If you increase your manpower you might not be able to cover the increased costs immediately. On the other hand, extra resources could free you up to spend more time on other business building activities to lead to bigger profits.
Alternatively, you could bring in a person to take on non-core specialist areas to allow you to concentrate on what you are really good at and why you created the business in the first place.
A rule of thumb to use when making this decision is whether you are confident that taking on an extra staff member will generate enough extra sales to cover the cost of that extra employee.
Skilledpeople.com makes it easier for you to decide when to recruit by putting small dynamic businesses in touch with experienced, skilled people, many of whom are specialists in their field, but who cost less than their younger counterparts.
Most of our candidates are aged over 50, looking to work more flexibly after 30 years of mainstream career development.
In this respect, the DWP has worked with BusinessLink to develop a 2 minute toolkit for SME employers to understand changes to the Default Retirement Age, and what it means for them. This includes case studies illustrating businesses that are already employing over 50s. More information can be found here.
Conventionally, employees are full-time, permanent and salaried. But this may not suit your business. Instead, consider hiring skilled people on a Project Assignment basis, lasting from one to 20 days to get specific pieces of work done to allow your business to progress without taking on extra risk.
Skilledpeople.com candidates who agree to work on a Project Assignment basis guarantee not to charge more than £185 per day. This is way below what you would have to pay a freelance marketing consultant, accountant or safety inspector. But you will be getting practical help of a comparable calibre from someone who will take a keen interest in your business.
Whether you are employing a person for one day's consultancy or on a permanent basis, seven considerations to make sure that person is right for your business are:
- Physical and mental make-up
- Achievements
- Intelligence
- Special skills
- Interests
- Personal circumstances
- Aptitude and characteristics
A good place to get more information on recruiting staff with hints and tips for interviewing and assessing different characteristics is businesslink.gov. This is what businesslink.gov.uk says about our proposition:
With skills shortages and changing labour markets, it makes sense to utilise all available skills and experience, regardless of a person's age, and to encourage older workers to stay within the business.
Employers can benefit from employing older workers as part of an age diverse workforce. These benefits could include a reduction in recruitment and training costs, and increased productivity.
At the interview stage, the best questions to ask are those which force a candidate to think in different ways. 10 good interview questions are:
- What is the best part and the worst part of your present job, and why?
- What bit of work do you find the easiest and what bit is the hardest?
- What has been your greatest success and why?
- What has been your biggest failure and why? (Do not let the person get off by saying they've not had failures - we all have!)
- When you were last angry at work, or very frustrated, what caused it and what did you do?
- How would your best friend describe you?
- If someone did not rate you, what reasons would they give for doing so?
- What worries you most about the job?
- What will your family and friends think of your new job?
- Describe your ideal boss and working environment?
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