Companies are becoming increasingly aware of the importance employee engagement brings to a business. Employees who are completely engaged in their work and the company are more likely to be loyal, productive, and effective in their roles, and that makes companies much stronger.
So, it is a really good idea for businesses, where they can, to try and hire employees who are highly engaged. Below you will find some tips that should help you, or your HR team, to do exactly that:
The strong interest inventory test was devised to help people work out what career paths they might like to take based on their interests, likes, and dislikes. However, as an employer, you can use it to potentially identify those candidates who are likely to be highly engaged. After all, if the test identifies that they have a keen interest in the kind of tasks they will be required to do if they start working for you, then you can safely conclude that they will enjoy the job and be as engaged as possible. It’s not an exact science, but it can be pretty helpful.
Asking candidates lots of technical questions can be a good indicator of how enthusiastic they are. As you will probably know, the nuts and bolts of any job can be quite dull even for those of us who enjoy our work, so if the candidates answer in a way that indicated that they are truly engaged; if their eyes light up and they have a lot of ideas to bring to the table, it s a good indicator that they will be engaged as an employee. If, on the other hand, they seem bored, even if they answer in a way that is technically correct, they may not be the best fit for you.
In a similar vein, if you set them a problem to solve or a task to complete and you monitor how much fun they are having doing it, how easy they find it, and how much effort they put into looking at the problem from all angles to come up with the best solution, you should be able to gauge more or less how engaged they will be should you decide to hire them, after all, they will be on their best behaviour during the interview, so if they do not impress now, they probably never will and you will never get the top quality work out of them that you require.
If they have worked in similar roles in the past, or they have completed educational courses that mesh with what you do as a company, it is a pretty good bet that they will be engaged in the new role too. However, many people do get disillusioned with a sector when they have worked in it for a long time, so it is still worth interviewing them and asking them lots of questions about the new role to see if they answer enthusiastically or not.
Of course, employees are unlikely to be highly engaged in their work if they are working in an environment where they do not mesh with, and people who they do not get on with. So, when you are hiring new people to come and work for you it is really important that you think about whether they are a good fit culturally too.
How can you determine this? It is not always the easiest thing to do, but finding out a bit more about their beliefs, both personally and in terms of work can help, things like whether they prefer loud or quiet environments, whether they like mixing with colleagues outside of work and things of that nature, can be particularly useful.
You may also want to bring them into the office and let them mingle with existing employees for a few hours to see how they do.
Although there is no exact science that will enable you to hire employees who are highly engaged from the get-go, the above ideas should help you to wheedle out those candidates who are not particularly interested and engaged, while also identifying those who really do want to be there, which will certainly make for a stronger staff and a more effective business in the long term, so they are most definitely worth putting into action when you are next recruiting.
