Summary: Before you take action in your business, you plan. May people don’t plan enough when it comes to hiring. Here are a few things you need to plan to get you started and to help you Plan to Get it Right.

In many parts of your business, before you take action, you plan. You don’t launch a marketing campaign without knowing what results you want. You don’t give a customer a price for services without knowing if you will make a profit. When it comes to recruiting however we feel it’s ok to jump in without a plan, and then we wonder why we can’t find good people.

Right now I have many clients who are hiring new team members. This is wonderful as they are all growing their teams. Sometimes we are too eager to jump in and get a new person started.

If you really want to get it right the first time,  some planning is needed before you even advertise a job opening.

Here’s what you need to plan for:

Skills: Needed for the position.

Knowledge: This goes beyond skills, for example – a bookkeeper needs Quickbook skills and accounting knowledge.

Attitude/Personality:  This sometimes gets overlooked. Do they need to pleasant, prefer someone quiet, or do you need a more “chatty” person.

Working style: Do you need someone to work with little direction or more side by side to do the work in a particular way.

Then you can prepare yourself to ask the questions to find out what you need. This planning will help you spot who fits the job the best and who would need more work. It will also help you avoid “shinny object syndrom” that flashy piece of experience someone may have that looks like it may help you one day but is not needed now or in the immediate future.

What else do you look for in people who work for you? Tell us below.