Small Business Hiring in 2022: 3 Tips from Dance Studios

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To kick off 2022, your small business may be looking to grow its team of employees . Whether you run a local coffee shop, landscaping business, or boutique marketing firm, it’s essential to find the right people to contribute positively to your company culture. But as you know, this is easier said than done. 

However, you can turn to one potentially unexpected source of advice to help make your hiring process a success: the dance studio world. The number of dance studios in the U.S. grows at an average of 3.2% each year. Platforms like TikTok, with its numerous dance trends and challenges, will continue making dance lessons popular this year. 

This means that along with running their dance classes , studio owners have a lot of experience when it comes to growing their businesses and hiring new employees. This quick guide will cover three top tips from the dance world to help jumpstart your steps in the employment market. Let’s get started.

1. Ask Candidates About Their Passions

Conducting a hiring process for potential new employees can be challenging because you have to get to know these individuals in a relatively short time. Therefore, you want to ensure you’re not wasting any time asking the wrong questions.

One of the most illuminating questions you can ask an applicant is, “What are your passions?” In the dance world, we expect individuals to express a strong passion for dance. But we also look for those who describe working with students or sharing their passion with others as their top priorities. 

There are plenty of reasons you should ask about your candidates’ passions. This allows you to: 

  • Find out what motivates candidates. By asking about candidates’ passions, you can understand what motivated them to apply for your open position. 
  • Understand candidates better. Understanding your applicants’ passions tells you what they value in life. You might even ask about their passions outside of work to get to know them better as individuals. 
  • Determine if it’s the right fit. When employees are passionate about their jobs, they want to stay at them longer, contributing to higher employee retention rates. 

These reasons make passion one of the essential qualities to look for when hiring new employees. 

2. Assess What Candidates Know About Your Brand

The interview process is vital to get to know your candidates on a deeper level and help your applicants start to picture themselves as employees of your business. Your candidates might have come into contact with your organization before through exposure to your brand. 

Proper branding is essential to stand out from the crowd in the dance world. According to DanceStudio-Pro’s marketing guide , most dance studio owners adopt a multichannel marketing strategy to reach new and current audiences with their brand and share what makes their studio unique. 

Asking candidates about what they know about your business’s brand can help you assess whether each individual has spent time seriously considering how they could fit in and be an asset to your company. Asking about your brand can also help you: 

  • See if the candidate is a good culture fit. Does the candidate seem enthusiastic about your brand? If so, this demonstrates that your company’s culture intrigues them. 
  • Discover where candidates would take your brand next. This shows whether the candidate has put energy and thought into what they could do with their unique skills to make your company even better. 
  • Determine how your brand is coming across. This is a great opportunity to assess the effectiveness of your marketing strategies  and how audience members perceive them. 

By asking candidates about your business’s brand, you can assess their preparedness for the interview process and their interest in the role. Plus, you can evaluate how they see themselves as the right candidate for helping your business build its brand.

3. Identify Your Most Important Needs and Select Candidates That Can Meet Them

Your new employee should fill a gap in your team’s talents or workload. For instance, dance studio owners often search for new teachers specializing in certain dance styles that they want to start offering at their studios to draw in new students. 

Determine what your business’s most pressing needs are by asking yourself the following questions: 

  • What would a dream hire be able to do?
  • How would a new hire’s strengths and weaknesses best complement yours?
  • What do you need to do now to reach your long-term goals?

This Recruiter.com post  recommends diversifying your talent pool by connecting with multiple recruiting networks, from professional communities to social networks and universities. This ensures that whenever the time comes to conduct hiring interviews, you have a few promising sources to look to for talented candidates that can contribute a variety of skills that your current team lacks. 

Ask any dance studio owner about the hiring process, and they’ll tell you finding the right candidate isn’t an easy task. However, they will also probably share strategies like these that they use to help the process go more smoothly. 

Remember, at the end of the day, it’s not about finding the perfect candidate — it’s about finding a person who’s the right fit for your business and who can contribute their unique mindset and talents to help further your goals. 

 

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By Laura Cole