In this economy, training is more important than ever. Each and every employee in your company needs to be firing on all cylinders, all the time, if you want to outshine your competition, keep your collective heads above water and survive this rocky recession. It means delivering stellar service, top notch work and delighting customers.

Many companies are choosing to spend some of their limited budgets on beefing up their training — a wise move. If your company is one of them, that might mean you’re adding new trainers to your mix of HR professionals. And now more than ever, it’s critical to hire the right people for the job. Because training is only as effective as the trainer.

That’s why it’s useful to ask the question: What makes a great trainer? Here are a few ideas:


• Integrity
By this, I don’t mean personal integrity, but that is, of course, a useful trait for any new hire to have. I mean integrity in the sense of their training. In other words, trainers need to understand the subject matter they’re teaching inside and out. They need to be credible, knowledgeable subject matter experts. You can find the best trainer in the world, but if learners get the sense that he or she really doesn’t know beans about customer service and is instead spouting a line from a book, that training isn’t going to hold water.


• Flair and Fun
No, they don’t have to be performers, but classroom trainers need to have the ability to make even the driest subjects interesting. Think back to your own days in school — odds are, you did the best in the classes in which the teachers were fun and engaging. No matter the subject, a great teacher or trainer makes all the difference. That’s especially true if those subjects are critical to your business — safety courses, for example.


• Great ideas
One of the most critical components of classroom training is the discussion that happens among students. If learners share ideas, experiences and theories in a lively discussion, it engages everyone in the topic. Oftentimes, however, adult learners aren’t comfortable opening up in front of a group of co-workers. There’s a fear of failure, or a fear of looking uninformed, and especially if the boss is in the room, the fear of simply speaking up. Good trainers know how to get around those fears and foster discussion.


• The ability to make learners see what’s in it for them.
This is the most vital job of any trainer — communicating in exact terms what the particular course is going to do for the person taking it. Adult learners don’t need broad concepts, they need information that is going to help them do their jobs better, more efficiently and quicker. Oftentimes, trainees don’t see the relevance of the training — and that makes for a disaster in retention.

How can you make sure you’re hiring trainers with these qualities? Test for them, of course. You can test for character traits, personality, skills, intelligence and aptitude. Remember, your training is only as good as your trainers.




Charlie Wonderlic is the President and CEO of Wonderlic Inc., a premiere provider of employee recruitment, selection, development and retention solutions. For more information about customized hiring solutions from Wonderlic, visit www.wonderlic.com