What to look for in ideal employee candidates

Vicky Smith from S-5! says that your ideal employee will be knowledgable about your company and about their position.

Editor's note: The following is a transcript of a conversations between our Multimedia Manager, Megan Ellsworth, and S-5!'s Corporate Director of Human Resources, Vicky Smith. Vicky is stepping in as guest host for S-5!'s Founder Rob Haddock for this month's influencer topic. You can listen to the interview or read the transcript below.

Megan Ellsworth: Hello everyone. My name is Megan Ellsworth here at MetalCoffeeShop.com, and I'm super excited to be chatting with Vicky Smith. Hi Vicky.

Vicky Smith: Hi Megan.

Megan Ellsworth: You are one of our influencers and we're so glad to have you on board. So let's dive right in. And this month's question is, what are some best practices for attracting and retaining employees that you use in your company?

Vicky Smith: Well, for attracting employees, I think when you're doing your job ads and you're hoping to get the type of candidates that you're looking for, they need to be very informative, they need to be very well written, and they need to be descriptive of what you're, what you're actually looking for. I think another thing that you need to do is to make sure that you're being competitive with your salary and your benefits and your and physician perks, such as we do, you know, quarterly bonuses. We have a,a my brain just died, I'm so sorry. A training reimbursement perk that we offer. If there's certain classes or certain trainings or seminars they wanna participate in that we normally don't do, they can submit a request for it and we will help them pay for that. And then of course, another way is you wanna be thorough with your interviews. You wanna make sure that you are telling them the day to day you wanna ask the questions of what type of person or employee that they are, but you also wanna be able to answer the questions they might have about the company or the position or maybe even people that have held that position before in the past.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, well said. Are, are there any like little pieces of wisdom that you wanna share with any contractors out there currently trying to hire office staff or people on the roof?

Vicky Smith: Well, for office staff, again, you need to make sure that they know what they're getting into and what their day-to-day is gonna look like. And you wanna make sure when you're hiring people that are gonna be on the roof, that they have the ability to go up there. You'd be surprised if they think, oh yeah, that's gonna be such an easy position and I'm more than happy to get up there. And then they get up there and it's like, not so much.

But for the most part, I mean, it's just being honest with your candidates and then getting a feel for what they are able to do and what their strengths are and what maybe you can utilize them for.

Megan Ellsworth: That's great. Well, this has been great advice. Any last words on this topic?

Vicky Smith: Well if you wanna go into on how do we retain employee development for us yes, is very important. We like to make sure that we cross train, we provide mentors for people that want to promote within the company. We wanna make sure that we're allowing them that area to grow and they have the knowledge and they've been with us. We want them to succeed. So we think that's very important. I also believe that appreciating and celebrating your employees are very important, whether it's celebrating their wins or we also do employee of the quarter, I think I mentioned, and, but we also have a kudos plan that they can go out and it's on one of our websites or on our employee portals that anybody can go in and give a kudos to any employee. It doesn't even have to be necessarily their supervisor, but they can go on and and tell them thank you or share something that they've, that they heard that that employee has done above and beyond. And I think that's very important.

Megan Ellsworth: Yes. I love that. I love that. It's so important. It's so important. I love that you do an employee of the quarter too, so it's, you know, it's more than like an employee of the year, but not quite as in frequent as like monthly. It feels a little more special than monthly.

Vicky Smith: Right. Yeah, they seem to enjoy that and that way, like you said, it's not as far out as once a year, but it does make them feel like they won that quarter and that's important for them.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, that's special. I think we're gonna use that here now. Good. Well thank you so much for chatting with me today. And again, we're so excited to have you on as a metal influencer, so welcome to the Influencer gang.

Vicky Smith: Well, thank you, Megan. It was nice getting to visit with you.

Megan Ellsworth: Likewise. For all of you listening out there, go to Vicky Smith's directory on MetalCoffeeShop.com to find out more about her and her company. And we'll be chatting with you next month. Bye. 

Vicky Smith: Bye.