Retaining Leaders

Conduct regular stay interviews with every employee you can’t afford to lose this year. As you fine tune your company’s strategic plan for the coming year, consider that your key leaders may not be there to implement it. According to job search engine SimplyHired, January is the busiest month of the year for job searches. […]

Hiring Someone Tomorrow?

So, you’re hiring someone tomorrow and you’re scrambling to do it well. First of all, we strongly suggest you not rush into hiring, due to the increased likelihood of making a mistake which results in lower performance, cultural misfit, and the extra expense of firing one employee and having to hire and train another. Rushed […]

Hiring for Fit and Match

Do you hire for fit? Many companies say they do, but not all of them are executing it well. Here’s a look at how and why you should hire for fit, and why we think it trumps experience and education. At VisionSpark, we often refer to hiring for fit and match as “hiring for your […]

Common Hiring Mistakes

When the hiring landscape becomes competitive, employers must tighten up their approach. Many hiring managers and entrepreneurs have their work cut out for them. Check out our list below to see if you need to stop committing one or more of these common hiring mistakes. Hiring Mistake #7: Failure to See Onboarding as Recruiting Yes, […]

Hiring in a Shrinking Pool

Recently, we wrote a post about why employers in “B minus towns” should hire (not just recruit) on an ongoing basis. The truth is, when it comes to hiring these days, all employers may as well be in B minus towns. Unless your company is among the golden few — the Googles, the Apples, the […]

The Achiever Assessment

Why should you care about an assessment tool? We’ve written before about the high costs of mis-hiring and how a strategic hiring process can improve productivity, employee morale, and your company’s bottom line. The potential rewards of strategic hiring are clear. That’s where the Achiever™ comes in. Assessments can help reveal a candidate’s talents, introduce objectivity into the candidate selection process, and provide […]

Common Executive Hiring Errors

The idea that even the best business leaders are failing at anything may be challenging to accept. Business owners and executives are generally skilled at wearing many hats. Their confidence and competence tend to go hand in hand. But the adage that “you never know what you don’t know” is true. While many professionals apply […]

Behavioral Interviewing Guide

Are you still winging it in interviews, asking questions you think are interesting or clever, making hiring decisions based on your gut instinct? You can do better. Much, much better, as it turns out. Because companies have been bombing at hiring…big time. Even talented executives at top companies botch hiring. To quote Laszlo Bock, hiring […]

How to Hire A Players

What is an A Player? Brad & Geoff Smart are well-known for their Topgrading approach to identifying A, B and C Players, which Chris Mursau, a VP at Topgrading describes in this post. Steve Jobs is also well known for insisting on A-list hires to build A-list companies. In essence, A Players are the top-choice […]

Continuous Recruitment

I recently read an interesting article in Inc. Magazine that explored tactics for employers in smaller, less appealing towns to attract top-grade talent. One of the suggestions I found particularly interesting was to “hire, especially when you don’t need to.” Distinct from ongoing recruitment —which is also an increasing trend— in their example, Orion Energy Systems of Manitowoc, […]

Hiring for Values in EOS

Hiring for values doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If you want to improve your outcomes and bottom line through hiring, your organization must be ready. VisionSpark focuses on identifying, articulating and hiring for corporate culture fit. How can your organization expand on that and take it even further? The EOS Process™ is a great place to […]

Handling Culture Misfits

I was speaking with the CEO of a local company yesterday, and he was disappointed by the discovery that one of his new executive hires is not working out. This was a candidate who had come highly recommended and had charmed his way through the hiring process, with a great resume to boot. In short, […]