Finding & Keeping Good Employees

How to “Hire Smart,” so you don’t have to “Manage Tough”

Michael Van Horn and B.J. Van Horn
#8 in the series

A strong team of employees is core to taking your business where you want it to go. This workbook details how to make sure you hire the best team, have them work productively together, and stay with you.

What kind of person do you need to hire to grow?

Someone who helps you—

  • Better exploit your company’s competitive advantage

  • Get to the next stage of growth

  • Get the most from your unique skills and gifts

  • Compensate for your management weakness

  • Be the most productive with your time

  • Make it smoothly through the upcoming transition.

Topics covered

  1. Defining the job you need done

  2. Finding the best person for the job

    Screening and interviewing

    Questions you cannot ask . . . and how to get the info you really need

    Reference checking

    Offering the job

  3. Getting people started off on the right foot. Orientation and training.

    Acclimation period

  4. Creating and maintaining a work environment that keeps good employees.

    What drives good people away?

  5. Performance evaluations

  6. Procedures and systems for successful employers

    Employee handbooks

  7. Avoiding problems

    How to avoid problems

    How to handle problems when they arise

  8. Observing the legal requirements

  9. Appendices. Sample forms

Warm up exercise

From the textbook

The 12 Worst Finding & Keeping Habits

Do any of these sound like you?

  • “I can’t afford to hire the people I need.”

  • “Only I can do this job.”

  • “Good people are not available.”

  • “What if I hire them and then our business goes down?”

  • “I end up hiring and training my own competition.”

  • People kept leaving because of my foreman. But I couldn't afford to let him go.

  • “I am not a good manager of people.”

  • “Our current employees get upset if I hire someone from outside to come in above them as manager.”

  • “I enjoy doing these routine tasks.”

  • “I once had employees, I got rid of them, and I am not getting any more.”

  • “I’m not good at interviewing and hiring.”

  • "We wanted to fire that guy for months. Then finally he quit."