What to Look For When Hiring People

You are sitting in your office, waiting for a potential employee to come inside, sit, and discuss his credentials. You look at his resume and you’re just simply impressed. But you know, deep down inside, that resumes are not everything, that there is something more that what a piece of paper tells you.

Call it instinct, something that you feel in your gut. With your experience as a martial arts school owner, you’ve dealt with a lot of people. You know that some people will surprise you, and if you just based your judgment on their resumes, you would’ve never hired them in the first place. Of course there are those people who never met your expectations, people who did great in theory but lacked in application. You hired them, and nobody’s blaming you for that. But through the years you’ve learned how to find the right people, and that a piece of paper doesn’t guarantee a good hire.

I’m talking to those school owners who’ve had years of experience managing and hiring people. If you, per chance, are an aspiring martial arts master and have no idea on how to find the right people, then read on to know what to look for when hiring people. First they should have…

… The Initiative

Do you know the downside of having initiative? Mistakes. Other than that, people who have initiative just want to do well in their jobs. They are the people who don’t waste time waiting for their superiors to tell them what to do. Sure, they can make mistakes by acting without instruction, but creating errors is a good way to learn. Next time they do the job, it will be perfect.

Versatility

People who can do a lot of jobs are very rare. Being versatile doesn’t mean being experienced in a lot of jobs, sometimes, all people need is the willingness to learn a lot of different things.

Ability to Make Deadlines

Martial arts business owners do a lot of forward thinking. Their brains are like schedule creating machines that assumes tasks will be done on a certain time. A good employee makes good on his promise and finishes his work at the right time, keeping the clockwork of your business running smooth.

Flexibility

Flexibility is the ability to use past experiences and apply it to new working conditions. To know if a candidate is flexible, give him a hypothetical problem, something that he’s not experienced at, and let him solve it by using what he has learned from his past jobs. If he creates a solution, then you can at least gauge his level of intelligence and resourcefulness.

There is no single approved template for hiring people. It involves risk. The good thing is, we can always put extra effort in getting to know a candidate a little bit better. Do some background checking and make a few phone calls. Look past the resume and ask the right questions. These, I’ll tell you, will be all worth it.