Can do’s versus… Troubles and…

Can do’s versus … Those will do’s

While the VPOR position might be a payroll freebie, that new hire isn’t. But what’s more costly than adding that new position is hiring the wrong candidate for it. Make that mistake and you get to repeat all the time you invested in that hire.

And maybe worst of all you now get to deal with the skeptical customers to whom you just introduced that new team member!

The best way to avoid that costly (and painful) mistake is to live by the solid rules of personnel selection in the interviewing process. The core idea? Look for both the qualities that say the candidate can do the job and most importantly the ones that say that he actually will.

Those can-do’s include things like his mechanical aptitude, physical ability, having a welcoming personality and even the ability to speak well.

They’re pretty easy to assess because they’re right there in front of us. If he mumbles, he flunks the measure of speaking clearly. Ditto mechanical aptitude if he doesn’t know which end of the screwdriver to hold.

But those will-do’s are another matter. There we have to look for things like energy level, stability, honesty and loyalty. The only place to find those is in the candidate’s past. Someone who’s been married three times might bring stability into question. Likewise if he exaggerates his past education or experience that says a lot about honesty. And if he badmouths his current employer, maybe his loyalty needs a better look.

Next up: The most impactful will-do.

Troubles and …Balancing it all

There’s an old poem by Runyard Kipling that contains the line, “If you can keep your head when all those around are losing theirs”. With all the turmoil in local and national politics, plus the daily drumbeat of global troubles, keeping our heads and focusing on our business and personal lives can be a challenge.

Of course we could swear off TV, Radio and the internet and mentally divorce ourselves from everything outside our lives. But that’s not really possible – or even very useful. What is possible, however, is to compartmentalize all of them. We can put those external those matters in their “bucket” and allow the ones that are personal to us to rise to the top.

Of course we don’t want to be like that old Beatles song Nowhere Man … (“He doesn’t have a point of view. Knows not where he’s going to”). We want to be informed, but we also need to prioritize what matters most personally and professionally.

So listen to the news, read the posts on those internet sites, but in the end, what matters most to us is what we do daily. Come election day we can voice our concerns at the ballot box. In the meantime, there are bills to pay and pleasant ways to spend what’s left over.