SkyWater Blog

As an entrepreneur running a small-but-growing business, your hiring decisions are some of the most critical – and risky – decisions you will make. Every organization, regardless of size, is impacted by every new hire. But the smaller your company, the bigger the impact. Indeed, a study conducted by Guidant Financial and LendingClub found that for small business owners especially, employee recruiting and retention is a challenge in a strong labor market.

In your organization, communication skills are important. You expect employees to work as a team, help customers, and, as an expert in their discipline, you expect them to make important recommendations to help you drive the business.

These are a few of our favorite interview questions that help test candidates communication skills during the interview process.

As employers seek to improve the cultural richness and success of their organization, they turn to new hires to bring new skills and fresh perspectives to teams. In terms of hiring practices, we are seeing a shift away from an emphasis on hard skills in favor of a closer focus on soft skills.

Hard skills are the technical, specific abilities that can be taught. Soft skills, on the other hand, are generally more subjective and elusive, referring to personal and interpersonal qualities and characteristics. The advantage of soft skills is that they give employers a deeper insight into their potential hire.

Below you will find some of the most important soft skills to consider when recruiting for your next vacancy:

3 Employer Branding Tricks to Stand Out in the Crowd

Even for the most qualified applicants, interviews can be a daunting experience. At SkyWater, we advise all of our candidates to research the company, understand the role and rehearse their answers to the most common interview questions.

Two of Minnesota’s cities were named by ZipRecruiter as top ten job markets at the beginning of 2015, namely Rochester (4th) and Minneapolis (10th). Out of the big cities (population in excess of one million), Minneapolis was ranked top, ahead of Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City and Columbus.

Peer interviewing is the process of allowing potential co-workers to interview a prospective new hire. The pressure is on employers to get it right first time in the hiring process, so what better way than allowing potential future colleagues to offer their assessment of whether the candidate will be the right fit for their brand?