Make Sure You Are Right Hiring HR Staff - Update

I have thought about this topic for some time and the last seminar I went to really propelled me to write this post. I wanted to update this from my January 2013 post. 

I am sure each of you have made a bad, questionable or wrong HR hire. I know I have, only twice in my 30+ year career but they were costly to recover. So here are a couple of thoughts when you hire your next staff person and this goes for every level:

• as the right questions that answer your HR concerns, issues, and philosophy
• make sure their cultural prospective is the same as your company's
• don't just replace the person who left, make sure the new hire has band width to grow at a high functioning pace
• are they business savvy, not just knowledgeable of business, do they speak business
• if they just want to work with people that is a red flag
• make sure you spend enough time in the recruiting process and over hire not equal hire 
• does their philosophy dovetail with yours, so you have to play psychologist/philosopher
• make sure they know HR in all aspects not just the position you want to fill
• look at operations people/support within your organization, they do real well in HR
• pass them through your line managers or the people they will support

I am sure you all know this but it never hurts to bring it to top of mind so you don't get antsy in the hiring process.  

I would appreciate your comments and any additional areas you think I may have missed. Email me at wgstevens2@gmail.com.