Hiring Wisdom: The Secret to Hiring Great Employees

While many employers play up the perceived rewards that a new hire will enjoy when they join the team, few do anything to mitigate the risks new employees take when accepting the job offer.

So, here are five (5) ideas to help you balance out the risk/reward ratio:

Go after boomerang employees (the good ones who have left you) — This can net you an employee who will need little or no training and it tells your other employees that the grass really isn’t greener elsewhere.
Referrals — Employee-referred new hires acclimate faster and stay longer because the friend at work who referred them told them more about what it is like to work at your company (the good and bad) and the person self-selected anyway.
Win awards as a Great Place to Work — It’s not as hard to do as you might think if you are willing to actually apply for an award and put in the effort it takes to do all the paperwork. Not that many companies actually do apply so you have a good chance of being in the Top 25. (I once worked with a company that got a “Best Place to Work” Award. They were No. 16 out of 25, but the kicker is only 37 companies applied.)
PR (public relations) — Think about issuing company-activity press releases and newspaper articles. Get exposure for supporting local activities and causes. If you hire young people, adopt a high school in your area and help support some of their activities.
Make the job hard to get (be very choosy) — One strange thing about human nature, we think things that are hard to get have more value. When we’re offered a job that was hard to get, we take a great deal of pride in that and make every effort to live up to the company’s high standards.

This was originally published on Mel Kleiman’s Humetrics blog.