The
next step is to decide what education and experience the employee
will need.
Here are some tips:
Companies need employees to be as well qualified as possible.
You should be hiring for the future, so you want employees who
can advance or do more difficult work as the business grows.
Asking for too much education can be a problem, though. You
will probably have to pay the person more than you really need
to. Also, employees will be frustrated if the job doesn’t
challenge them.
Make sure you know why you want that level of education. Education
should add something extra to a person’s ability to
do the job -- different knowledge, more comfortable with
problem-solving
in unfamiliar situations, more experience writing or giving
presentations. A diploma isn’t a guarantee, though.
Make sure the applicants really have the strengths you think
they should.
If you hire someone for his or her work experience, make sure
the person has up-to-date skills and is willing to keep learning
different ways of doing things. These days, most businesses
need to have employees who are willing to keep learning and
learning. If your candidate hasn’t taken formal courses,
make sure he or she has found some way to get new ideas.
Don’t narrow the field too much. A marketing job in agribusiness
may seem to require a degree in business administration or agriculture,
but a degree in chemistry or a CMA designation, combined with
the right experience, could produce a stronger candidate in
some circumstances.
Remember that it is against the law to discriminate against
people because of their age or place of origin. (Click on Saskatchewan
Human Rights Commission for further information). Don’t
try to get around this by setting education and experience so
that it has this effect.
For example, you would be breaking the law if:
You ask for people with ten years’
experience sweeping floors because you don’t want to hire
an eighteen year old;
You ask for only recent graduates so that you could hire someone
young; or
You ask for a graduate of a Canadian school because this would
tend to discriminate by place of origin. It is fair to ask for
a license to do a job in your region or for eligibility for
a license to do a job in your region, but it is not fair to
require that the education take place there.
You may see some job advertisements which
do have this kind of limit -- for example, "must be between
ages fifteen and twenty-nine". Some exemptions -- and
financial assistance -- are given to employers if they are
creating jobs
for people from disadvantaged groups who have a more difficult
time finding employment. Check with Human
Resources Development Canada for more information.
Here is the education and experience you would want to see
in the sporting goods sales clerk:
High school education, with strong sports background.
Experience in a retail setting an asset.
