Building a successful company relies heavily on creating a solid team. The process itself (when done right) should be based on hiring team members, rather than hiring outstanding individuals who only function well as “solo players”. Successful team leaders are aware that the success of their project largely depends on their team, which helps them complete tasks and achieve the different company goals.

The importance of hiring solid team members

Without a strong team to rely upon, executive directors and project leaders risk dealing with challenges and setbacks that seem impossible to overcome. Even worse, they risk under-performing or even failing to complete various work tasks. Such outcome results in disappointed consumers or clients, and has a negative impact on the company’s brand and profits in general.

In order to be successful in hiring team members, recruiters have to be both skilled and proactive (rather than reactive). They need to be able to make wise decisions while interviewing candidates and raise the bar after each hire. But, how can recruiters make sure they are choosing wisely during the recruiting process?

Having a specific recruiting funnel certainly provides an objective opportunity to hire more solid team members. Having a well-defined and specific recruiting funnel is very useful in the process of identifying, attracting, and hiring professionals in any industry.

Within the past couple of years, the channels that individuals use to search and apply for a job have drastically changed. Smartphones and social media now play a key role in recruiting. These two have become crucial sources in modern hiring funnels.

The immense role of smartphones, social media and search engines

According to the latest statistics, over eighty percent of job seekers prefer to search for job opportunities on their smartphones. Over sixty percent of them would apply for a job using an app on their smartphones. This approach should certainly be a prerogative for managers and companies that are in the process of recruiting. Unfortunately, many businesses don’t offer such opportunities for potential job candidates.

Social media and social networks are powerful recruiting resources nowadays. Social media allows you to share or transmit information to a large audience. This is a good way for the companies to initiate interest and reach their next solid team members.

Social networking is certainly a fantastic opportunity for like-minded individuals who share mutual interests, to associate on social networking sites. These two are the essentials of modern social recruiting. Twitter and LinkedIn are used to identify and communicate with job seekers. This is a great opportunity for businesses to take advantage of social media in the process of hiring team members.

A large number of individuals use Google or other search engines to search for open job positions. Instead of checking job boards, it’s becoming commonplace for job seekers to rely on the search engine results pages. Due to this common practice, it is essential for recruiting companies and recruiting managers to consider SEO when hiring team members.

Employee referrals are still important in hiring team members

The latest research shows that referrals help people get hired much faster in comparison with candidates from job board sites. Moreover, HR executives have rated referrals as the best source of solid job candidates, which proves the high value of referrals in almost all industries.

Employee referrals are valuable to employers since they broaden the reach for any job opening and improve the process of finding qualified and talented staff. Case in point, if there are 50 employees in an organization, each of them has an average social network of 70 friends. This means that the potential reach for an open job position is 3500 people.

If a recruiting company doesn’t focus on referrals during the recruiting process, it is missing out on many talented individuals that can be included in the team. For this reason, employee referrals can go a long way in helping you find solid team members.

Job boards and career sites

Job boards and career sites are another useful tool for recruiting companies. It is all due to the opportunity to reach beyond the company’s own database, and directly contact individuals who visit these sites and job boards. Using automation tools, a recruiter can easily learn about a candidate’s prior performance level, quality, and other useful indicators.

Career sites are created to attract job seekers. They are used by various businesses to communicate with potential candidates when there is a job opening and present the company’s brand. Having an attractive career site is ideal for making a great first impression.

What to look for when hiring solid team members

When building a solid team, there are certain traits to look for in order to maximize the chances for success. Aside from technical skills, solid team members should have other crucial attributes as well, such as: trustworthiness, communication skills, and a friendly, yet open-to-mentoring attitude.

Having strong personal integrity is crucial for every solid team member. It is very important for the employer to have a trustworthy team on every important project. A trustworthy team member will never leave a task unfinished and is always loyal. Trust leads to better personal relations and improved communication. Without these essential elements, there is no foundation for successful teamwork.

Other than being loyal and having strong personal integrity, solid team members should show interest in the projects they are working on. It’s not enough for a team member to be skilled and knowledgeable to complete their tasks; they have to be interested in achieving goals, too. If they don’t show enthusiasm while working on a project, they may be harmful for the work of the entire team. It’s advisable to always avoid such job candidates.

Speaking of teams, communication plays a key role in success. Having great communication skills and interacting with other team members is crucial for every project. However, being a strong communicator itself is not sufficient. It is more important to be able to relate to other team members and communicate easily. When hiring, it is important to make sure that everyone in the team can work well together.

Do your best to hire friendly people who enjoy sharing their experience and skills, and teaching other team members. Every successful company needs a solid team comprised of team members that are eager to support each other in the process of completing work tasks.