Listen closely to this piece of hiring advice, because you may not hear it anywhere else.

 

When you have a pool of good candidates and are looking to narrow down the options, take a hard look at the home address of a prospective employee. I guarantee that assessing the commuting distance now will save you heartache in the future.

 

The exact travel distance (or amount of minutes) you should use as a cut-off will depend on your office location.

 

Think about the commuter options in your area. If a candidate does not live close to your office, what highways or commuter trains will your future employee have to use in order to get to work? What do you know about the traffic patterns during the time frame that you expect your employees to arrive for work each day?

 

Another tip is look at the commuting time or distance of your top employees. Consider any issues you’ve had with past employees who simply could not arrive to work on time (or who only stayed with your office for a few months). Did commuting distance have anything to do with those situations?

 

Based on this critical information, you can assess what type of commute is reasonable for staff at your office. Add just a handful of minutes or miles to that reasonable amount, and you’ve got your cut-off for potential hires.

 

Why is a future hire’s home address so important?

 

When employees live too far from the office, it causes them pain—which means it ends up becoming a pain in YOUR behind. Make no mistake that employee will jump ship as soon as there’s a comparable position closer to home. Or, if no better option presents itself, the employee will be the first to ask you for a salary increase in order to justify the commute.

 

In short, don’t interview anyone who lives significantly farther from your office than your existing employees.

 

Stay tuned for the next installment of this series, when I’ll disclose the three deal breakers I look for when I’m deciding who to interview.