Looking to build an epic team for your company? In this article we reveal the characteristics of a good employee and how to define yours.

This is the crucial first stage in our seven-step system to building your team of A-Players, who produce consistently high quality work and boost your company’s success.

We are bringing you some fresh ideas to help you unlock your team’s full potential, unplug yourself from micromanaging, and carve the lifestyle that you dream of!

After all, isn’t that what you want?

Before we start interviewing candidates or visiting recruitment sites like LinkedIn, we must define the qualities of a good worker – whether this is hiring an executive assistant or a new head of HR.

We must also look at what you want your new team member to achieve while working for you.

There are three aspects to familiarize yourself with:

• Objectives
• Key Results
• Key Attributes

Let’s run you through each of these, giving you a better look at what is required.

But first…

Why is it Important to Define the Characteristics of a Good Employee?

When we suddenly want to hire a great employee to do a job, it’s usually out of desperation.

We realize that we cannot handle the amount of work we have with our other employees. So, we panic – then reach for a painkiller. In other words, we scramble to find a new employee who can take a load off.

The problem is that when we do this, we are focused on the past and the problems we want to solve.

A better mindset is to look towards the future. Ask yourself, “What do we want this person to achieve for us?”

It’s important to do this before you even start looking. Yes, before you write your job post or head to Indeed, it is crucial that you are crystal clear about what you want this new hire to achieve.

Next, it’s time to look at the three aspects in more detail.

#1 – Objectives

What is the definition of a job objective? Job objectives are simply statements of what you want this person or position to achieve.

For example, if you are hiring a new SEO expert, an objective may be:

Grow our website into a quality, lead-generating machine.

This gives us a much better way to measure our candidate pool against this outcome.

The question now changes from, “How likely is this person to be the painkiller I needed yesterday?” to “How likely is this candidate to achieve this objective independently in the next few months?”

#2 – Key Results

The purpose of a key result is to give you and your new employee CLARITY of how you expect them to achieve the objective(s).

For example, the key results of your SEO expert may be:

• Increase monthly traffic to the blog from 5,000 unique monthly viewers to 10,000 UMV by x date
• Increase our current web domain score from 21 to 50 by x date
• Increase our inbound calls coming from the website from 5 to 20 calls weekly by x date
• Increase our lead magnet downloads from 2% of monthly traffic to 4% of monthly traffic by x date
• Hire and onboard 2 copywriters by x date

The key takeaway here is that key results are both a practical tool (giving employees direction before they apply and when they start) and an accountability tool.

In terms of accountability, the key results carve the responsibilities for a specific job into stone.

Both management and employees then accept these responsibilities. This is why hiring confident employees (see below) is important, as it ensures why will be able to work on these responsibilities without too much supervision.

These key results form the basis of evaluations for management, while employees can use them when reflecting and assessing themselves.

This is the recipe for continued success.

#3 – Key Attributes

Finally, we can look at key attributes (sometimes known as key qualities) and how they tie into the qualities of a good worker.

Key attributes are simply the traits that this new hire needs to exhibit in order to achieve the set objectives and execute to a high level on key results.

For example, key attributes of great employees at your company may be that they are a good communicator, they will produce great quality work, and they will put their best efforts into learning new skills and getting on with their co workers.

They are just some of the best qualities that new employees can have. These can all help make a positive impact to your company culture.

A word of warning – some employers may jump straight to this step, but Objectives and Key Results are an important prelude to Key Attributes.

Don’t overlook them!

To continue with our SEO expert example, some key qualities of the best employees that we would include are:

• Strategic
• Efficient
• Adaptable
• Organized
• Proactive
• Good work ethic
• Takes direction well
• Communicative
• Team player
• Good technical skills
• Ability to work independently
• Self confidence
• Strong communication skills
• Strong critical thinking skills
• Positive attitude
• Brings new ideas or innovative ideas
• Has a fresh perspective
• Ability to meet deadlines

As you can see, these key qualities are the more traditional qualities of a good employee you may find on many job postings.

They are all equally important, although not every employee will have every quality – and that’s fine!

However, the most valuable employees will have more of the qualities listed above than average employees.

Naturally, you will be able to determine who has these positive traits and who doesn’t during the interviewing process.

Now that we have all three components defined, it’s time to put it all together. We use our own Report Card, which looks something like this:

Congratulations, you can now define the characteristics of a good employee! What’s next?

That’s all for this lesson!

Now you know how to establish Objectives, Key Results, and Key Attributes. You are well on your way to hiring some great employees.

The important takeaway here is the defining your Objectives, Key Results and Key Attributes are all key. Complete tasks such as this before moving onto writing a job post.

Whether you are hiring a new SEO expert or customer service manager, make sure you have filled in your report card!

Honestly, it may seem like a small step, but it’s a vital component in an effective hiring process.

We know that finding employees can be tricky. This is why we are bringing you seven steps of an effective recruitment process. You can now move onto Step #2, where we look at how to attract the best people with an effective job posting.

Then you can take a look at the ways to post a job vacancy for free.

If you have any queries about this first step or hiring employees in general, you can reach out directly at success@wholefounder.com. I will help you put it into action for your business!