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Why
are you hiring? Before you even begin a recruiting process,
you need to determine whether you already have staff on board who
may be able to fill the job. Personnel you already have are (or
should be) a proven commodity. They are committed to your company
and it's success. A new hire on the other hand, is an unknown. Give
the folks in your company the opportunities to grow into new, more
difficult positions and then fill into the lower positions with new
personnel.
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What
are you looking for in a new hire? The answer to this
question is almost always related to the skills required or desired
in the candidate and how they relate to the job that needs filling.
And while skills are an important consideration, don't forget the
more important one. Chemistry! How well a new hire will do
on the job has as much, if not more to do with chemistry, than it
does with their ability to do the tasks of the job. The ability of a
new hire to join in with an existing team will have a great bearing
on his or her success and the success of the team. Funny thing about
chemistry; it can hardly be defined, it cannot be taught, and
generally, it's darn difficult to learn. It's just there! Skills
however can be learned and taught. Find out up front how a candidate
will fit in and keep the assessment of this factor high on your
priority list when you make you selection.
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Always
be on the lookout for good people in unexpected places: The
most skillful person we ever met at hiring good people was Bob
Mathews. Before his death in 1987 from Prostate Cancer, Bob managed
to build an enterprise that he started in his garage into a company
today approaching 300 million in annual sales. The company is U.S.
Computer Services and today is the largest first class mailer in the
United States. They produce and mail something over 65 million bills
monthly to telephone and cable television subscribers worldwide.
Anyway, Bob built this company with a lot of strong talent that he
found in unexpected places. He would talk to waitresses while dining
out, to airplane personnel while boarding airplanes, and to
bartenders in Las Vegas. He would converse with the crew painting
his house, the CPA doing his taxes, and the firemen who came to
inspect the building. And in all of these conversations, Bob took
little stock in what the person was DOING but noticed HOW they did
it. Did they carry through? Did they push hard to get the job done?
Did they work well with their co-workers? Did they seem committed
fervently to their mission? Did they have a plan for getting their
job done and did they follow that plan? If the answer to most of
these questions was yes, Bob would hire them, sometimes right on the
spot. He clearly understood that these are qualities that are
difficult to find and impossible to teach. His theory was that he
could teach them to do the work. Some of those hires are Vice
Presidents and Senior Vice Presidents in the corporation today and
they started at the bottom years ago.
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Watch a
new hire carefully and abandon ship quickly if it's not going to
work: Some of those you hire will work out to be mediocre
at best. This means that there is either a serious job mismatch or
you have hired someone who is not going to work out. In the case of
a job mismatch, try to find other opportunities in your company, In
the latter case, the longer you let that person sit in that chair,
the worse the situation becomes. Not only is the new person not
carrying his share of the load, but the other members of the team
are working harder to make up. And the longer you let that person
sit in that chair, the longer that chair is NOT being occupied by a
competent employee who can be a contributing member of the team. Act
swiftly when your gut tells you things are not going to work out. |
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Hiring
good personnel is one of the most difficult aspects of any business
venture. Because the success and growth of your business is
dependent, in large part, upon the people you surround yourself
with, doing this difficult task well should be high on your priority
list. Here are some of our thoughts on this subject. We do not claim
that what we have to say here will guarantee surefire results, for
we are dealing with human nature here. But our experience is that
these issues can greatly improve your chances of getting good
people.