Qualities of a Good Employee Candidate
Knowing what are the qualities of a good employee is great, but you need to be able to identify at least some of those traits early. When you’re screening candidates, you need a few guidelines to improve your prospects, and those guidelines can be demonstrated by a few key qualities.
Clear Communication
How many times have you read about soft skills in a resume? Soft skills are better demonstrated than listed. Clear communication isn’t just valuable; it’s enlightening. A person cannot communicate clearly unless they have a base-level understanding of the topic. This comes from intellectual curiosity. Good communication skills are also inseparable from strong professionalism. People who take initiative, face problems head-on, and show up every day learn to communicate well. Someone with this trait is basically spotlighting all of the characteristics of good employee skills.
Bringing Ideas
If you’re still screening a candidate and they have ideas to offer the business, you know you’ve found someone special. The sheer sense of initiative necessary to be this bold speaks volumes, but their idea also shows you how clearly they understand the business and their role in it. Anyone who can bring ideas to the table before working with the company for a long time deserves the extra attention you’re going to give them. This is true even if the ideas aren’t earth shattering. The mere effort gives you a chance to gauge the candidate’s current skill level and potential.
That said, it’s probably unreasonable to expect every candidate for every position to proffer brand new ideas from the first interaction. People who can do this should be valued, but there are other promising qualities that don’t require every prospect to reinvent the wheel.
Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm is the close cousin of drive. It’s certainly not fair to expect people to be enthusiastic all of the time, but when someone is excited to work with you, it shows. More often than not, that enthusiasm can easily be cultivated into drive.
There’s another positive. An enthusiastic reaction to any exposure to the company culture is an automatic win. There’s no better way to screen people who stand to be a good fit.
Well-Informed
Being well-informed is at the top of the list of signs you are good at your job, but more than the rest, it demonstrates a strong work ethic. For a prospect to be well-informed of your company and/or culture shows that they did their homework. They worked hard just to get a chance to work with you. Think about how valuable that display is.
It is impossible to be well-informed without exhibiting other positive traits. It demonstrates an attention to detail, enthusiasm for the new job, natural curiosity and several traits of the best type of employee.
Asking Good Questions
Once again, we discuss intellectual curiosity. People who ask good questions are inherently curious, and that’s something you can always make work. It also shows a little bit of initiative. Someone asking questions is thinking about how to succeed. It might not be as big a display as bringing new ideas, but it’s enough initiative to get started.
Good Employee Skills for Managers
We’ve talked a lot about employees, but finding great people is meaningless without proper leadership. Be it management, team leaders or mentors, the difference between employees with great traits and great employees all falls to the cultivation of talent. These are the leadership qualities that will take promising employees down the path to great success.
Good Planning
It’s obvious, but it’s important enough to mention here. Leadership has to have a plan. This isn’t just a business plan. When you’re cultivating talent, there should be a plan for each employee. Obviously, Tim Cook isn’t mapping a talent plan for every sales rep at the Apple Store, but the management hierarchy needs to be able to supply development plans to every employee. Anything less is setting people up for failure.
Personal Investment
This is hard, and it’s often overlooked. Good planning will never meet with proper execution unless this skill is present. Leaders have to be personally invested in the success of their constituents. No leader should ever want to see one of their people remain stagnant. Even though it’s nice to rely on the same person for a long time, managers and leaders have to embrace the goal of helping their employees grow out of their current roles. Personal investment is how you display emotional intelligence, help everyone become a team player and manage the positive and negative traits of an employee to make everone a candidate for becoming the top employee.
Motivation
The previous skill leads straight into this one. Finding ways to motivate people is infinitely challenging. The development of workplace culture was mostly founded on solving this problem, but even a good culture isn’t enough. At the end of the day, people respond to genuine treatment. The best way to motivate a team is to genuinely care about their success. From there, it’s easier to reward signs of a good job and inform what to say about a good employee.
Decision Making
What’s the difference between a leader and a follower? The leader can make hard decisions. It’s an irreplaceable skill that every leader needs. Indecision will kill any business in today’s climate. It’s true in every single industry. Things move fast. Challenges are endless. Management has to build the ability to make tough decisions and get the right outcome on a consistent basis.
Delegation
The last important skill for leaders is the ability to delegate. What’s the point of finding and cultivating great employees if you don’t let them work? Delegation is more than just time and resource management. It’s a means to display trust and confidence in employees. It’s a mechanism to interact meaningfully with people you’re trying to develop. It’s the ultimate bridge between leaders and the people under them.
Develop Good Employee Skills With Lessonly
As you can see, there are clear and deliberate ways to look at employees and discern between teh characteristics of a bad employeeand a great hire. Lessonly doesn’t just identify these important skills and traits. We have an entire path to building and improving the entire skill set. Our training software can help your employees overcome weaknesses, develop strengths, and feed into a workplace that brings the best out of everyone. Get a demo of Lessonly today.
