Hiring Trainable Candidates

It’s important to hire trainable candidates. Trainability refers to how quickly and well someone can learn new tasks. Every job has a learning curve to learning new materials and tasks. A trainable employee easily learns these tasks. How trainable an employee is in the beginning is a good way to measure how they will do in the long run. This makes hiring a trainable employee an important part of building your successful team. Curious what qualities trainable employees have?

Here are 8 characteristics of trainable employees.

1. They ask well informed questions. Everyone in a new job is going to have questions. It’s important they ask these questions and are not instead left feeling confused. Asking questions shows they care about doing the job right. 
2. Able to take constructive criticism. It is normal to make mistakes at work. What matters is how your employees react to these mistakes and learn from the constructive criticism you offer. If they get defensive and show no signs of changing their behavior, that is a major red flag. On the flip side, if they take your feedback well and work hard to fix their problems, you’ve got a trainable employee. 
3. They are a team player. A trainable employee has your team’s best interests in mind, not just their own. For example, if a coworker is out sick, a trainable employee will have no problem helping them out to meet the team’s deadlines. 
4. Have good communication skills. Having a good ability to communicate with management, clients, and other coworkers is a very important skill to have in the workforce. Many problems can come from miscommunications, and having strong communication skills is a great way to not only prevent these problems but solve problems that may arise. 
5. They have strong problem solving skills. Problems come up in any field of work and how you address the problems is a key way to see if an employee is trainable. Do they see the problem as an opportunity for growth or do they remain stuck?
6. Able to work independently. It’s normal for a new employee to need a lot of assistance from supervisors. As the training progresses, they should be able to complete work on their own. 
7. Have a positive attitude. Attitudes can be contagious. If an employee has a positive attitude it is likely to translate to the client. An employee with a positive attitude is also more likely to complete goals and have more motivation. 
8. They are adaptable. They are able to adjust to new circumstances and changes with little to no guidance. 

No matter how trainable an employee is, it’s also important to have a good training program and be able to teach them well. Even the most trainable employee won’t thrive if they are not taught properly. Take a moment to reflect on how you train and onboard new employees. You can even ask for honest feedback to see how the process was for them. Anonymous surveys are a great way to get this honest feedback about your training process.