As 2020 marches steadily onward, one key area of your business that you should have your mind on is hiring. After all, for startups and small businesses, having a solid team can mean the difference between long-term continued success and crashing failure.

Before you look to expand your team, however, there are a few steps you should take to make sure that you’re building the most skilled, trustworthy, and ambitious group you can. That’s where the hiring process comes in.

In this post, we’ll cover everything you need to know about hiring in 2020, and explain what key steps you can take to elevate your business’s hiring game. With a few insider tips, you’ll be well on your way to growing your team – and your bottom line – in the rest of 2020.

Grow in strategic areas

First things first: it’s crucial that you think critically about the areas where you sorely need to grow. Is it worth it to have an in-house accountant? What about a full-time HR rep? Is your data team in way over their heads and in need of some serious backup? These are the questions you should first ask yourself when thinking about hiring – after all, you want the new positions to be valuable assets to your business, and not just another person on payroll not contributing to the collective growth of the organization.

If you’re not exactly sure what areas you should grow in first, but know that you need to start growing soon in order to see your profits start to increase, here are some ideas to jog your creativity:

• Content writers are always in high-demand, as internet content rapidly grows in advertising and search engine optimization importance as time goes on.
• Graphic designers are essential for companies hoping to build their brands. Without a solid logo, or well thought out design scheme, your brand is pretty much dead in the water.
• Skilled programmers are always coming up with nifty new gadgets and gizmos that might be able to advance your business – if you’re in tech, too, it’s almost always helpful to hire on programmers.

Once you get a good idea of what kinds of positions you’ll be recruiting for, it’s time to talk applicant security.

Be sure to conduct background checks

If you’re in charge of a smaller business, you know how vitally important each new hire can be. It’s just math: the fewer employees you have, the more each individual person’s impact matters to the health and growth of your business.

When you’re looking to expand, then, you’ll probably have security top of mind. You don’t want to hire on some rapscallion who makes off with valuable company assets and secrets before stealing away to some competitor, or worse, outright thieving from you!

In order to make sure you don’t hire any scoundrels of unsavory intent, it’s a good idea to conduct background checks on all your potential employees. This is usually a good idea at the end of the hiring process, once you’re reasonably sure that the candidate is going to be the right choice for your company. What should you look for?

• Conduct a criminal background check online to make sure they don’t have a suspicious past.
• Verify that their previous employers are who they say they are, and that their experience checks out.
• Be sure you get a good idea of the relationships they had with previous bosses.

You can get a good gauge of a person from an in-person interview, but nothing compares to hard data. Don’t skimp out on a background check and be left with nothing but regret later!

Think about cultural fits

The cultural fit of your employee is also hugely important, especially for smaller companies. You don’t want someone ruining your company’s vibe, and choosing someone who is overly aggressive or a just a plain old wet blanket can certainly have ill effects on your company culture.

By conducting an in-person interview and allowing employees to get a chance to meet the applicant, you’ll gain crucial insight into their mannerisms, sense of humor, and general outlook on life. That’s essential for companies who value camaraderie among employees first and foremost.

Making the right hiring decisions can be difficult, but by following guidelines like these, you’ll be well on your way to profitably growing your team!