employees

What Makes A Good Employee: 17 Qualities We Look For & That Make A Difference

Hiring can be a tedious process and spotting a good employee can be tricky. Adding someone to your team is crucial so we want to break some things down to help you with the process!

Reasons why you should improve the hiring process

  • To attract and retain high-quality employees
  • To improve the talent acquisition process
  • To spot good employees by looking into their emotional intelligence, coachability, motivation, and temperament

Any business requires an effective hiring process. The scope goes way beyond just reviewing resumes and holding interviews. There are other things you can look into to ensure that you’re hiring the best talent for your company.

The hiring process

This is a process that involves several steps to complete: to find, recruit, and hire. As stated, a great hiring process will encourage and attract high-quality employees. While every company’s needs are different, there are some general steps every business should observe when looking for qualified workers.

Important qualities to search for in hiring new talents

Reliable

You need an employee that’s ready to get the job done every workday with utmost presence and focus. An employee can be extremely talented and qualified, but if he/she is not reliable, it would be such a waste. 

1. Team player

Most, if not all, employees in a company will need to interact with either co-workers or customers. For this reason, it’s vital to have an employee with the ability to work well with others. Great employees can collaborate with the rest of the team, especially if you’re hiring for a managerial role.

2. Positive influence

Every member of the team impacts all the results of your operations. A good overall attitude from every employee will help your business thrive. A positive work attitude truly is infectious and can have a ripple effect in motivating others as well. Meanwhile, if you hire someone with so much negativity, that can be infectious too and will affect other members of the team negatively.

3. Honest

Running a business means you have to trust your employees and trusting them requires knowing that they are honest. Having dishonest employees can have huge effects on your business, whether their lies are big or small. Honest people own up to their mistakes and have more potential for growth.

4. Driven

best emplooyee

You don’t want an employee only providing your company the bare minimum. While you should not ask them to do anything beyond their job descriptions, they should also not be stagnant. You want to hire ambitious and driven people since those qualities can impact your business positively. They will keep delivering to the best of their abilities even without being asked.

5. Qualified

Of course, you need someone with the right skill sets for the job you’re hiring him/her for. You don’t need to find every qualification you dream of, but they should have the minimum skills the job requires. Otherwise, spoon-feeding them may be counterproductive. 

6. Strong work ethic

It’s easy to find people who tick off all your qualification requirements, but those are in vain if the employee doesn’t have a strong work ethic. You need employees who have the initiative to go the extra mile to accomplish tasks and meet deadlines. Commitment means the world in any business. When you have employees who show up and do their best, your company will thrive in more ways than one because you have team members who are efficient, productive, and organized.

7. Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence, commonly termed as EQ, is your mindfulness of your emotions and the emotions of others. There are things that can throw us off, but EQ is knowing how to respond professionally despite all the emotions.

8. Detail-oriented

Especially when you’re hiring for an office position, detail-orientedness is vital. There are numerous documents and emails to go through on a daily and knowing the details is key in keeping everything working harmoniously. 

9. Takes feedbacks seriously

feedback

Employees who are ready to turn feedback into results are employees who will thrive in your company!

10. Innovative

You don’t want a stagnant and excessively complacent employee. What you need is someone who thinks out of the box and brings innovative ideas to the table.

11. Willingness to learn

Learning never stops. The most dangerous people are those who think they know everything. The most successful people are those who think they never know enough because this means they embrace learning with open arms. Willingness to learn paves the way for maximum growth and having such employees will be a great addition to any company.

12. Communicates well

An employee doesn’t have to be the best with words or the most eloquent to fit this category. He/she just needs to be able to get the message across clearly, may it be in written or verbal speech. 

13. Culture fit

culture fit

Every company practices a culture: from the way, workers dress to how the organization works. You’ll have to break down the culture your company has during the hiring process to ensure if the candidate is willing to fit right in.

14. Common sense and critical judgment

Your employee represents your whole company and an employee who keeps on making bad decisions will not pave a way for a good reputation, not only for them, but also for your business. Thus, hiring employees with common sense and reliable judgment will help you prevent this from happening. 

15. Leadership

Even if your current vacancy is not a leadership role, you’d still want someone who holds the potential to be one. There can be situations where they need to step up and take action, thus, you don’t want someone who is always dependent on other team members.

16. Professionalism

Professionalism involves being well-spoken, polite, calm, and presentable. 

17. Punctual

punctual

Being on time says a lot about a person’s personality. You don’t want to send out an employee to a client only to find out they came in 30 minutes late. Your employees, again, represent your business. 

Time tracking app is something you can use to monitor and manage work hours on jobs and projects among your employees. This will maximize productivity and will make your payroll process more accurate and easier.

How to look for candidates

You may try using the following tips in looking for potential employees:

  • Posting and soliciting resumes and employment applications on career sites
  • Pre-screening before getting in touch with anyone
  • Taking those who did not meet your basic criteria out of the list
  • Performing extensive and in-depth assessments by conducting interviews and doing job simulations
  • Verifying and confirming the accuracy of submitted employment records and qualifications

Final thoughts

We have emphasized, and emphasizing again, the importance of having a great hiring process. It will attract potential talents and will give you a higher chance of hiring the best possible candidate. Now, you may use the tips we have in this article to help you. Best of luck!