The Basic Characteristics of a Good Employee

What are the basic characteristics of a good employee? For your business, what are the key factors to look for in employee screening and evaluations?

Are you going to cost your business a ton of money by making a bad hire?

Some businesses hire their employees based on diplomas and resumes, others make their hiring decisions based on employee evaluations and performance reviews.

Regardless of the elements go into your selection and hiring process, the bottom line for all businesses is achieving results.

Business is won and lost based on the employees you hire

Every time you hire a new employee, you stake your reputation as a leader and the chemistry of your team on the line.

The characteristics of a good employee is probably more a matter of figuring out what works best for your specific business, rather than searching to find the "perfect" employee on paper.

The "Go-Getter" and the Myth of Employee Motivation

There is no shortage of motivational trainings available.

Fact is, if you're spending any amount of time motivating and cheerleading employees, you'd better get new employees.

Are You Hiring the Right People For Your Business?

And get a new hiring manager while you're at it.

Why do you struggle to motivate people to do the jobs they were hired for? Wasn't that their parents responsibility?

How much easier would your job be if you could look into a crystal ball?

You could see whether or not a prospective hire has the characteristics of a good employee that you and your business are looking for?

Brad Smart, the business author and highly sought after organizational consultant to organizations like GE and Motorola, calls this employee screening "Topgrading."

Smart proves, convincingly, "Topgrading" is the answer to almost every organization's hiring decisions.

It's an employee evaluation system that targets and hires the "A" players within any group. . . allowing you to build an effective team around them. The sceening process also rids your organization of "C" players.

In Smart's professional hiring experience:

• "Pre-selection is always superior to training."

Always superior, meaning the people you hire into your business is your ultimate responsibility and is the #1 factor for determining your team's success or failure.

The employees you assemble to build your business are either "A" players or you're not doing your job.

Here are Smart's main characteristics of a good employee:

• Readily accepts responsibility for their actions and results.
• They see themselves as "agents of change," meaning they feel have the ability to change their environment when they take the right actions.
• They strive to develop themselves.
• They see opportunity where most only see difficulty.
• Failure is the stepping stone to success. To the "A" player, failure is okay, as long as it proceeds success.
• Results focused.
• Optimistic.

What Is the Cost of Hiring the Wrong Person?

13 times your employee's yearly salary in many cases!

That's how much hiring the wrong person for your team and organization will cost in extra training, hand holding, time, mistakes, and the cost of training their replacement.

Why not go after the right person from the get go? Target your new hire based upon the characteristics of a good employee that you determine through testing and topgrading. Do this from the get go and you'll save yourself tons of time and trouble.

Some people will say, "I can't find them?"

Someone is obviously hiring these "A" players. Why not you?

If you find yourself constantly battling problem employees, there is a kink in your hiring loop somewhere. You're not taking some important factor into account.

If you hire based simply on factors such as schooling, resume, or who they know it's possible you're shooting yourself in the foot.