Great companies are made up of great employees, which makes hiring quality talent imperative to your company’s success. One employee could change your company for the better, or could do a good deal of damage and cost you money and time. David K. Williams wrote in a 2012 Forbes article that a single bad hiring choice can cost a company anywhere from $25,000-$50,000+. That is a high price to pay for one hiring mistake.

Even if you don’t have employees that are necessarily costing you money, to have great success you need employees that do more than just the bare minimum. Instead, you need hard-working, diligent, humble, ambitious people that will excel in their positions. But how do you find and hire those quality people?

Even when there isn’t a shortage of applicants, there is always a shortage of quality talent. Check out these four compelling articles that are must-reads for all employers in need of more luck when it comes to hiring.

Speed up the hiring process

As unemployment decreases, job seekers have more job opportunities to choose from, giving them more leverage when considering a new position. John Sullivan, a professor of management at San Francisco University, said, “The power has shifted from the company to the candidate. They now have choices.” As an employer, that means that you need to move quickly in the hiring process so that your prospective hires aren’t picked up elsewhere before you can extend an offer. The insightful article Want Quality Talent? Hire Faster hones in on 3 ways to speed up the hiring process while still being thorough enough to make good hiring decisions: 1. You (the manager) get more involved in the hiring process, including gathering referrals even when not hiring, 2. Streamline interviews, focusing only on hypothetical scenarios and behavioral descriptions, and 3. Reduce the number of steps in the interview process in order to lower the drop-off rate of candidates who become disengaged because of how long the process length.

Focus on the right personality and culture match

Business News Daily advises employers to look for more than just skills and experience when hiring, and to get to know job candidates as people. The logic behind this is that skills will only go so far in making an employee successful. If a candidate doesn’t have social skills and a good personality or does not align with your company culture, he/she will not be a good hire. Skills can be taught and acquired, but personality can not. 8 Tips For Hiring the Right Person For the Job gives great advice on how to assess job candidates in a more well-rounded way to find the right fit for your company.

Use a performance based hiring process

Lou Adler’s article 11 Ways to Improve the Quality of Hire gives a unique perspective on why companies have been struggling with improving quality of hire for so many years. He says that the problems lie in focusing too much on generic skills and competencies, ill-defined jobs for hiring purposes, and indirect interviewing and assessment techniques. According to Adler, what will really help employers in their search for quality employees is using a performance-based hiring process. From how to better write a job description to modifying positions to fit the top people, these 11 tips will help you overcome your quality of hire struggles.

Check references (early)

Most companies ask job applicants for references, but unfortunately, many employers don’t use them to their fullest potential. Monster’s article Five Reference-Checking Mistakes is an extremely helpful guide on how to use references most effectively, beginning with using them the old-fashioned (non-computer) way.

“To be effective, the process requires intuition, common sense, extraordinary listening skills and the ability to combine various comments in a way that accurately portrays the candidate’s suitability for the position. In other words, people need to talk to each other.”

Read about the importance of employers being consistent in their reference use, requiring references who have worked directly with the job candidate in consideration, and more.