How To Hire the Best Staff for Your Child Care Center
No matter what industry you work in, great employees are extremely valuable and crucial to the success of your business. Finding great employees is not an easy process for any company and the child care/early education sector is no exception. Many child care centers and preschools run on tight margins which makes it difficult to pay their staff competitively, and even more challenging to find and retain great staff. As you build and develop your business, it’s important to put the right people in place. In a recent survey done by CareerBuilder, they found that, on average, a bad hire will cost a company almost $15,000. As a child care owner/operator, here are four steps that you will help you hire the best staff for your growing business.
1. Develop A Hiring Process
Spending time to develop a process to follow when hiring new staff will be time well spent. Put together a comprehensive hiring process. Identify the type of employee that you are looking for, put together clear job postings and make sure they are being seen by the right people. Put together a list of questions for the interview process and look for help online to determine the types of questions that you should be asking. Once your process is in place, it will enable you to follow simple steps each time you need to hire new staff, and it will make it easier to eliminate the candidates who don’t fit the position early on in the hiring process.
2. Identify The Employee’s Character
It’s important to ensure that the character of the candidate you hire fits with your company culture, as well as the position that you’re hiring for. During the interview process, be sure to ask questions that will help you identify the candidates character and depending on the position that you’re hiring for, you may also want to have them complete a test to help identify their strengths and weaknesses. If you follow a thorough, well-thought out hiring process, it will be much easier to identify the key character attributes of each candidate.
3. Connect With References
One of the best ways to find out more about a potential employee is from the references that they provide. Be sure to call each reference that’s provided, and take the time with each one to work through some important questions. This will provide you with the information you need and ensure that the references are being truthful in their feedback. You will find that the more time you spend on the phone with each reference, the more helpful information you will learn about the candidate.
4 Make The Most Of The Probation Period
Make sure that you include a probation period within your employment contract. The typical probation period used by most companies is 90 days. The probation period enables you to release an employee at any time during this period if they are not doing their job well or if you find them to be unsuitable for the position. It’s important that you make the most of the probation period, by providing the new employee with proper training and by keeping track of their progress to ensure that they are a good fit for both the position and your company. Working closely with the employee on a personal level will enable you to get a better idea of how they are performing and whether or not they’re a good fit.
Do you already have great employees at your center? Find out what you can do to motivate and retain great employees.
