Recently, I have opened up a new position in my team for Internship. And when I was going through the hiring process, I realized that there are many new managers who would make hiring mistakes unknowingly. Through this blog, I want to provide some guidelines for hiring a new person in your team, so that you can avoid those common mistakes.

Ask your Manager for help: If you are a new manager, and if you haven’t hired anyone before, then you might want to start the hiring process by asking your Manager instead of going with the HR training guidelines. I am not saying that HR Training for new manager is not useful, but sometimes those kind of trainings are very general. Those training might provide you required information, but they wouldn’t tell you specifics about processes followed in your department. If you ask your manager for help then he will be able to guide you in the right direction. And by asking your manager’s help, you are making sure that he is involved in your first hiring decision.

Involve your team: I have seen many managers, who hires independently of their team member’s decision. I would definitely advice against that practice. As a manager, you should always involve your team members in your hiring decision. This will serve many purposes. For example: This will not only tell your employees that you care about their opinion but also it will internally motivate them. This hiring practice will make sure that your employees don’t have any issues later on, when the new hire comes onboard. And you will have few more people to support your hiring decision.

Create a skill-set table: If you are hiring someone for the first time, then I would recommend you to create a skill-set table. This table doesn’t need to be a fancy and descriptive table, it can be a simple Excel Sheet of all the required skills for this position. For example: C, C++, SQL, Self-starter, Critical thinker, etc. Once you have this table ready, make sure to carry this table in all of the interviews that you take. Make sure to distribute this list to all the interviewers, so that they can grade that candidate on these skills. This table will not only work for you as a record of candidate’s capabilities, but it will also give you the opportunity to compare every candidate equally.

I hope these tips will help you to hire a new person in your team without any major mistakes. Let me know, if you have any other ideas through which you can improve your hiring process for a first time manager. Thanks. – Bhavin Gandhi